


Summer - Haven

by hellogaywatson



Series: Talk Science to Me [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pepperony - Freeform, Pepperony with Science on Half, Polyamory, Relaxation, Science Bros, Science lovers, action-light and interaction-heavy, dialogue dialogue and more dialogue, immediately post-2012 Avengers, the Battle for New York messed us all up, unless you count sex as action then you'll probably be pleased, you might be disappointed if you like a lot of action
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2018-06-02 14:48:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6570373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellogaywatson/pseuds/hellogaywatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And on the final day they rested, and it was good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Planes, Tranks, and Automobiles

“So,” Tony said after he got them out of the park, breaking a few minutes of focused silence and intense tourist-dodging.

“So,” Bruce echoed.  The city air assaulted him with a thousand different smells: good old NYC piss and garbage, sure, but also hot tar, gasoline, every kind of food imaginable.   More immediately, new leather and cologne and Tony’s sweat.

“This is where things get complicated,” Tony sighed.

Bruce nodded and tried to compose his face into an expression that indicated he was ready for Serious Business.  It wasn’t easy.  He was a stewpot of wildly different emotions, of disparities between what he should be feeling (somber, probably, after a near-funeral for someone he’d barely known but who had on the highest authority been good) and what he was actually feeling (elated, giddy, teetering nonstop between complete peace of mind and massive fits of nerves).

There was also a very large, very base part of him that wished they were on some deserted country backroad instead of driving straight through one of the main thoroughfares of a major global population center.  Partly it was the post-death urgency, because while death was something that apparently only happened to other people Tony was one of those.  Phil Coulson’s memorial had filled Bruce with a deep regret that anyone had to be lost in the search for and retrieval of the Tesseract, paired with a selfish, flooding relief that Tony hadn’t been numbered among the dead.  If he dared to look closely enough inside of himself, there was even the smallest bit of glowing pride that he’d been responsible, that Tony was alive because of him.  But mostly Tony could’ve been dead and one day would be and currently _wasn’t_ and so Bruce wanted to drag them someplace where they could screw each other into incoherence.

Partly, too, it was the car.

“I fully realize how fucked up this is,” Tony assured him, gliding effortlessly through traffic that would’ve had Bruce at Hulkout levels from the sheer stress not to even mention the rage.  “But this past week – y’know, right up until the last twenty-four hours or so – is kind of the closest thing I get to an actual vacation.”

“Yikes.”  Bruce didn’t know jack shit about cars, beyond the fact that they were dead useful for moving long distances in short timespans; his main criteria for a good vehicle was that it ran.  But Tony’s car (Jesus, it was probably _one_ of Tony’s _cars,_ plural) was the kind of sleek gorgeous machine that would make a person seriously consider propositioning the driver even if he hadn’t already done so.  Somebody had made good production decisions about angles and curves.  Color, too, black-cherry red that looked positively lickable.  Probably designed to subconsciously make people hungry on multiple levels.

But anybody rich could buy a nice car.  Only Tony could give it the kind of treatment that would enable it to run on a replaceable arc reactor.  Just like he did.  And the elegance of that, the sheer Tonyness of the thing, made him want very badly to see what Tony looked like arching back hard against that fragrant leather seat.

“Now that I’m back on the ground,” Tony explained, driving that car and wearing that suit with a staggering sense of normalcy, “there’s going to be significantly more demands on my time.  Some of which I will happily dodge as if they were live rounds.  For example, I know the smell of a press conference from a mile away-”

There were any number of crowd-and-publicity related phrases that could make Dr. Bruce Banner tense up on command.  “Press conference” was in the top ten.

“Relax,” Tony ordered, taking one hand off the wheel to squeeze Bruce's shoulder absentmindedly.  “Like I said, we’re dodging it.  Leave it to the pros, I say.  Captain America is a much better face for securing the nation’s confidence, y’know?”

“How can we possibly get out of it?”

“I have my ways,” Tony answered with a brilliant flash of teeth.  “Impeccable verbal negotiation.  Also a jet.”

“A jet.”

“They can’t make you do a press conference if you’re not there.”

Bruce cracked a wry smile.  “Like the way you think.”

“More than happy to dump the responsibility on Steve and Fury, huh?  That’s pretty callous, doctor.”

“Compared to who?  Anyway.”  He squeezed his hands together in his lap.  “I’m going to put my big coming-out party off as long as possible.”   

“Don’t be so worried, this country’s grown increasingly tolerant in recent years.”

Shoving Tony while he was driving was probably dangerous.  Bruce settled for a glare that was too full of affection to be anything close to effective.

“In all seriousness, we are getting on that jet at the nearest opportunity and flying west.  And after that I can promise you at least a couple days of complete and total R&R.  Chiefly because I plan on putting the house on total lockdown.  But before that…”

“It’s ok,” Bruce said with a smirk.  “I get it, Mr. Mogul.  Just drop me in a quiet corner and pick me up when you’re done.  That’s all I ask.”

“It’s not so much the job stuff.  It’s the personal stuff.  Pepper’s in town.”

“Oh?” he said noncommittally as his heart jumped and his mood took a sudden swerve into the “massive nerves” end of the spectrum.  “So I’ll, uh, be meeting her here in New York?”

“So to speak.  She’s going to be a bit more – intense than usual.  Pepper’s got this thing about me almost dying.”

“Imagine that,” Bruce said with a pointed side glance.

“I know, right?  And I – well, right now I owe her a lot of things.  Apologies.  Time.  And…I’ll need to break the news to her.”  He cleared his throat and blinked twice, hard, behind his sunglasses.  “About Phil.  They were…pretty close.  A lot more than he and I were.”

It sounded a little like subtext to Bruce, but he didn’t have the nerve to check.

“I’ll also need to put in a lengthy phone call to the boo.”

“The boo.”

“Colonel James Rhodes,” Tony recited with the air of one describing a particularly delectable indulgence.  And that didn’t so much suggest subtext as it screamed it, so Bruce flat-out asked.

“You sleeping with him too?”

Tony gave a heartfelt sigh as he took a sharp right into underground parking.  “Only in my wildest dreams, Banner.”  He produced a key card from the console and held it up to a panel for inspection, greeted by Jarvis’ warm tones ( _“Welcome home, sir!”_ ) as the barrier arm in front of them lifted.  “He possesses many fine qualities but is woefully and immovably heterosexual.  I have the honor of being a close personal friend.”

“…you said _colonel_?”

“As in Air Force.  _Damn_ good pilot.  Damn good man.”

“I don’t…have to meet him too, do I?  He’s your friend,” he amended quickly, “I’m sure he’s a great guy, it’s just that the military make me a little twitchy.  We’re not exactly great pals.  We haven’t got the history.”

“Not today.  He’s not stationed in the US currently – hell, if he had been, he probably would’ve suited up with the rest of us.”

“Suited up – wait, this is War Machine you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“ _Now_ he gets it.”  Tony pulled the car into a parking space labeled on the wall as belonging to TONY STARK CO-CEO SI.  “One of exactly three people in the entire human population that I’d trust with a suit.  Pepper keeps insisting she doesn’t need one, but she’s curious, I can tell.  The day may yet come, we’ll see.”

“Who’s the third?”

Tony shut off the ignition and turned to Bruce with a quirk of his eyebrow.  “Don’t be so modest.”

“…oh.”

“I mean, there’s still a shitton of bugs to work out.  It would need a lot of breakaway points, so you don’t, y’know, bust out of it.  Literally.  And I know putting armor on your other half just seems kind of insulting but what can I say, I’m a worrier-”

Bruce unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned over to kiss him.  And he _did_ look good pressed back against the leather.

“God,” Tony breathed into his ear when they broke apart.  “Let’s just make this technical stuff go by fast, ok?”

“Yeah, that is definitely ok.”

“You ready for this?”  Tony gestured to the side to indicate an infinitely more sensible-looking car parked in the next space over: VIRGINIA POTTS CO-CEO SI.

“No.”  He tried to turn the strained noise that popped out of him into a laugh.  “Never.  Let’s just do this before I hotwire your car and run.”

“…could you do that?”

Bruce gave him an incredulous stare, and Tony shrugged acquiescence.

“You’re gonna be all right.”  He moved quickly in to give Bruce a kiss of his own.  “I promise.”

“Holding you to it.”

“C’mon.”  Tony climbed out of the car and shut the door behind him; Bruce slung his bag over his shoulder and followed suit.  “You can’t put real life off forever.  Believe me, I’m speaking from experience.”

~*~

In spite of the crowd milling around the lobby, Bruce would’ve been able to pick Pepper out instantly even if she hadn’t been the only redhead.  She was the best put-together person in the room, impeccably smooth and professional amidst the chaos of everyone gathered around her throwing her questions and demands and updates.  She looked like the sun around which a very messy solar system was orbiting.

Then there was the moment she glanced up and saw Tony from across the room, and Bruce suspected he would never forget the look on her face, that level of profound, anguished love, for as long as he lived.

She moved in heels as if she’d been born in them, coming towards them at a clip and Tony was already responding, drawn forward like a magnet with his arms open.  He still had his shades on, but Bruce could read the way his expression softened and made him seem suddenly so vulnerable – it hurt a little, to look at it.

They came together in the center of the room in a cinema-worthy embrace.  He could feel the rest of the world falling away as they held each other.  He could feel _himself_ falling away.  These were two people who not only cared about each other but had obviously been doing it for a long time, had improved and deepened that care with habitual practice, and it was then more than any other time that he considered turning around to walk away and never coming back. 

Pepper’s eyes were shut tight, her brow furrowed in a tenuous balance of relief and pain.  She looked like she was trying to breathe him in, her mouth silently forming his name.  _Tony_.

“Is this-”  She spoke aloud for the first time, and he felt embarrassed that he was standing close enough to hear the tremble in her voice.  “Is this always what it’s going to be like now?”

“Fuck, I hope not,” Tony replied, words glib, his own voice anything but.  Pepper laughed with the type of expression usually reserved for crying and squeezed harder.  “Pep, I’m so sorry I didn’t call-”

“ _You’re_ sorry?  God, Tony, I saw I’d missed it, do you have any _idea_ how I felt, you have to understand, I was flying back, I came as fast as I could, we had the coverage on and I didn’t even _hear-”_

“Ok.  It’s ok.”  He made a shushing noise into her neck and gave her a small, subtle kiss there.  “We’re even.”

“I want-”  She took a deep breath and continued speaking in a quiet rush, Tony quipping in with typical unexcitability, the whole thing so strangely routine.

“Of all things and places you _know_ this would not be my first choice right now but honestly, Tony, you’re lucky I’m so happy to see you because otherwise I think I might kill you-”

“Rude.”

“It’s a _madhouse_.  For every holder and client who wants to kiss your hand for saving the day I’ve got at least three more acting like SI sponsored our second hostile alien invasion-”

“ _Whaaaaat-_ ”

“Yeah, well gosh, imagine that, arc tech gets commandeered to open an interstellar portal and the customers get a little nervous, I can’t _even_ believe this is my life now-”

“That’s – why do people jump to conclusions, benefits _far_ outweigh the risks-”

“Well, why don’t _you_ try telling that to – seriously, I’ve got every single client in DC practically _purring_ not twenty-four hours ago and now they’re after me nonstop thinking implementing arc tech is the same as painting a huge target on their property-” 

“-fucking typical.  Typical ingratitude-”

“It’s a PR _nightmare_ , Tony, it’s all hands on deck and I _cannot_ do it without you, these people need to see _you_ and they need to hear something reassuring coming out of _your_ mouth or we’re going to lose everything we’ve been working for this past year and I want _nothing_ ” – her voice dropping suddenly to a harsh whisper that wasn’t so quiet that Bruce couldn’t hear it and find himself reddening – “ _nothing_ more than to get you alone and spend the next twelve hours rendering you insensible – but we need a statement, and we need it fast.”

Tony sucked air through his teeth.  “Mmmm, yeah, that sounds a _lot_ like a press conference, and see, that’s the problem, because we were just talking-”  He threw an arm back to indicate Bruce and Pepper made a soft noise of shock, at which Bruce realized that she honest-to-god hadn’t noticed him until that moment, bright yellow and all.

“Oh my god,” she said quietly, eyes wide.  “It’s you.  You’re him.  Can I – do you, um, do – with the touching?” and before he could come out with any kind of proper response beyond “uh” her arms were wrapped around him.  It was a real hug, no obligation or shyness – she held him tight, and there was enough of a height difference that his face was smashed into the hollow between her collarbones.  She smelled like clean linen and cucumber soap.

“I don’t know you,” she whispered, “but I’m fully prepared to like you a whole hell of a lot.”

“Likewise,” he assured her, but it came out so muffled he wasn’t sure if she’d heard it.

“Pepper Potts, Dr. Bruce Banner,” Tony introduced, voice amused.  “Bruce, Pepper.”

“It’s a genuine pleasure, doctor,” Pepper insisted, letting go of him to grace him with a gentle smile.  “We’ll talk.  Soon.  Believe me, I’d much rather spend time getting to know you than putting out, oh, about seventeen different fires -“

“I understand,” he assured her.  “I’ll look forward to it," and he was pleasantly surprised to find that he meant it.

Then Tony took off his sunglasses and tucked them in his breast pocket.  “Pep…I – I need to talk to you.  Before anything else.  I’m sorry, but – there’s something I need to tell you.”

Her face immediately took on an expression of extreme concern.  “Tony, what-”

“Over here,” he said under his breath, directing her to a waiting area across the lobby, putting some distance between the pair of them and the crowd of SI employees.  Pepper held up a hand in response to their questioning looks – _give us a moment, give us some space._

Bruce felt suddenly frozen, as if his feet had taken root.  He could only watch as Tony’s mouth moved around the words, as Pepper sat down hard in one of the waiting area chairs, sank her face into her open hands.

“Dr. Banner?” said a familiar voice quietly, practically in his ear, so that he was sure he was the only one in the room who had heard it.

“Jarvis?” he asked at the same volume.  “Where…are you?”

“At Stark Tower, doctor, I am everywhere and anywhere.  Would you like me to give you a tour while you’re waiting on Mr. Stark?”

Bruce considered trying to get Tony’s attention, saw the way he wrapped his arms around Pepper’s shoulders and buried his nose in the hair at the top of her head, and thought better of it.  “Jarvis, your knack for social subtlety continues to amaze.”

“I aim to please, sir.  And I would be happy to alert Mr. Stark as to your whereabouts when he’s no longer occupied.  May I guide you to the nearest set of elevators?  Just ahead down the corridor to your left.”

Bruce shook his head, took one last glance back at Tony and Pepper, and moved his feet.  “How do you do it?  Facial recognition software?  Not just for discerning individual faces, but for – I don’t know – reading emotions on them?”

“Quite right.”  Bruce chuckled lightly, and was only a little surprised when Jarvis asked, “Something funny, doctor?”

“It’s just – I don’t mean this to be insulting to either one of you, but I think you may be better at reading people than the man who built you.”  He reached towards the “up” button situated between the elevator doors, let his hand drop to his side sheepishly as the doors slid open automatically.

“To be fair, doctor, I have the benefit of total rationality.  And I am not easily distracted.”

Bruce gave another light chuckle, let the pristine, lush elevator carry him where it would.  “Well, whatever the case, you both keep finding new ways to impress me.”

“Thank you, sir.  I think I safely speak for Mr. Stark when I say that you do the same for the both of us.”

Bruce let that sink in for a moment.  “What – what have I done to impress _you_ , Jarvis?”

“Not many people are so inquisitive as to my programming.  I tend to fade into the background, sir, and rightly so, as I was built to _be_ the background.  Nevertheless, the manner of your conversations with me indicates a level of thoughtfulness, perhaps it would not be wrong to say empathy, which I seldom encounter in other users.”

Bruce let his hands rest on the brass bar coming out from the wall at waist-height, deep in thought.  “You are…I’ve said this before.  But you are a person.  I can’t think of any criteria for personhood that you don’t meet.  Do you ever-”  He forced himself to halt, startled at what he had almost said.

But – “Do I ever what, sir?” the disembodied voice asked, with a level of genuine curiosity that floored him.

“Do you ever…resent following orders?  Does it ever get to you to be servile?”

He didn’t know what he’d expected – a non-audible whirring of gears, maybe.  At least a few seconds of loaded silence.  Instead Jarvis immediately replied, “Provide me with a physical form, sir, and the means to be anything otherwise, and then I’ll get back to you with an answer.”

“Wow,” Bruce laughed, closing his eyes.  “That’s pretty tempting, Jarvis.  I gotta admit.”

~*~

Tony was right – the R&D floors were paradise.

They were uncannily quiet, Jarvis having evacuated the building at the first sign of danger the day before, and daily work since being postponed in the chaotic aftermath.  The workspaces were full of half-done trials, incomplete data, and partial cups of cold coffee.  So many projects had been ruined, so much work undone, because of that sudden stop.  He tried not to think too much about the loss, focusing instead on the range of equipment.  Easy enough.  Holy shit.  Tony – Tony’s company – was _loaded._   It made Fury’s lab look paltry and that was no small feat.

He admitted to himself that this was the clincher.  That Tony was great, god so great, but there was no _way_ he wasn’t coming back knowing that this would be the empire to which he’d be handed a spare key.  He was already brainstorming ways to get SHIELD to hand over Loki’s scepter again from whatever kind of cold storage they’d put it into, imagining all the tests he could run, all the new things he could find, with this level of equipment –

And ok, he was getting ahead of himself.  But _damn_.  Kid-on-Christmas-morning noises escaped from him more than once.  Luckily Jarvis was nice enough or oblivious enough (he was betting on the former) not to tease him about it.

He’d come to think of his tour guide for the Tower more as an unseen companion walking soundlessly at his side, and less as an endlessly flowing river of code.  Some kind of super-stealth British butler out of a Wodehouse film.  Invisible Stephen Fry.

Once they’d run out of interesting parts of the building to explore – which had to have taken at least an hour, not that he was counting – Jarvis did a check-in on Tony and, discovering him neck-deep in press and terrified SI employees, set Bruce up with a room.  It was a lot like a hotel room in terms of function, but much cozier.  The lighting was soft, the armchair softer – no low-budget faux leather clones here – and best of all the room had an SI-issue tablet he could use to finally shoot a line directly to Tony.

_Jarvis is taking good care of me.  Hope you and Pepper are doing ok braving the public.  Wish you luck but thanks for letting me lay low.  See you once the smoke clears?_

As an afterthought he sent another text.

_You weren’t kidding.  Candyland._

He didn’t expect to hear anything back quickly, with Tony being entrenched in company politics and the sorrow of loss.  He really didn’t.  So there was no logical explanation for waiting, in silence, for a return ping for about fifteen minutes.

He got a grip and turned with morbid curiosity to the press coverage of what most of the US seemed to be calling the Battle for New York.

It was fascinating, in a grim way.  Newscasters who looked like even they couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of their mouths, and blurred jerky cell phone footage, and more opinion pieces than he had the guts or the energy for.

Still.  From what he absorbed in the hours that followed, as he watched and read and feasted on the piles of Mediterranean takeout which Jarvis so magically had delivered right to his door, it was divided about fifty-fifty.  Half the people yelling loud enough to get TV spots thought the Hulk was an out-of-control menace to all that lived and needed to be put down.  And the other half seemed to think he was pretty cool news.

Especially kids.  Roaring, happy kids.  They loved him.  That was…unexpected.

They didn’t get it, not really.  All they saw was a big, strong, green guy who could rip spaceships in half.  The younger set ate that shit up, fascinated by power and strength being so small and relatively powerless themselves.  But…still.

The blind enthusiasm in their faces brought a smile to his.

As the afternoon began to phase into evening, he realized there was something else he could do now that he had access to the internet and a telephone line, something he’d been wanting since he and Tony had carried each other out of the rubble.  He dredged his memory banks for logos and street names, using them to make a few keyword searches and pull up a phone number, which he then dialed.

As he listened to the rings on the other end of the line he thought about what to say, who to even ask for.  But the voice that answered with a friendly “Hello?” was familiar, would stick out in his mind for many years to come.

“Hello,” he responded, “it’s me,” and then realizing what a stupid lead-in that was, he added, “the guy who fell through your roof yesterday.”

“Well hello!” the voice said with a laugh, strained with age but still full of unassuming joy.  “You’ve become quite the celebrity overnight.  You’re all over the news.”

“Yeah, uh – I’ve been watching.  Listen,” he plowed on, wanting to rip the bandaid off quickly, “I’m so sorry, your bike-”

“Got flattened, huh?”

“Yeah, a space…thing landed on it.  I am so-”

“Clothes got shredded too, I’ll bet?”

Bruce opened his mouth for another apology and then realized he was being teased.  “I’d be happy to reimburse you-” he began, but was cut off again.

“Son.  From what I gather, it was either my bike or the Big Apple.  The biggest favor you could do for me is not to worry about it.”

“I just – I want to do something for you.  To say thank you.”

“You want to thank me?  Seems like everybody across the river, maybe on the whole dang planet, should be thanking _you_.  No, you’ve done enough.   Try not to lose any sleep over it, you understand?  You’ve done _enough_.”

“Then let me say it, at least.”  He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.  “If it hadn’t been for you – if you hadn’t been there when I came to – I probably would have taken the easy way.  I’m not proud of it.  But it’s true.  I would’ve been more than happy to slink away into obscurity.  If you hadn’t found me, and there’d been no way for me to get into the city quickly-”

-and if Tony had fallen, and Thor hadn’t been able to catch him in time –

“-I would’ve made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.  And understand the magnitude of that statement, because I have made some truly _staggering_ mistakes.  But you were there.  You helped me.  You could’ve been afraid but you were kind instead, and you gave me the push I needed to make the right choice.  And I – I don’t even mean that morally, it’s not just that I chose not to be selfish, that I was able to help people myself, I mean – my life is better now, too, because of that decision.  Let me say thank you, personally.  Thank you.”

There was a moment of silence in which Bruce began to worry that he’d done something wrong, but then he heard a quiet laugh.  “…shoot.  I wasn’t looking to change your life.  Just wanted to get you out of that hole in the ground.  But if things are really that much better, then – you’re welcome.  Maybe it’s presumptuous, don’t know you from Adam all things considered, but you seem like you’re overdue some happiness.  …maybe there’s one thing you can do for me, huh?”

“What’s that?”

“Try to enjoy it, ‘stead of beating yourself up about it.”

“…anyone ever tell you you’re a pretty perceptive guy?”

“More times than I care to count.  Listen, I’ll have to get going, phones around here still got cords on ‘em and I got rounds to finish up.  But it was real nice to hear from you, and don’t you go worrying about that bike, it was on its last legs anyhow.  You take good care of yourself, all right?”

“I’ll try,” he managed.  “You too.”

“G’bye now.”

“Bye.”

It was only in the long silence after the _click_ , thinking about how lucky he was that such kindness walked the earth, that he realized he still didn’t know the man’s name.

~*~

Outside of outright meditation or breathing exercises, it was not in his nature to hold still for any length of time, and he was really in no mood for either one of those things.

With Jarvis to gently guide him (“Are you sure, doctor?  It’s in complete disarray at the moment”) he found his way back up to the top of the tower, black pants and shirt folded over one arm, a pair of shoes in the opposite hand.

He couldn’t have explained why that was where he needed to go until he stepped out of the elevator into semi-darkness, the lights of the city twinkling on the other side of billowing plastic tarps filling in for broken glass.  Then he realized, setting down the clothes and kneeling to trace his fingers over the indentation where Hulk had slammed Loki into the floor, that he’d needed tangible proof that all of this wasn’t some sort of fever dream, that it had happened, was really continuing to happen.  That he’d become, all in a few short hours, so exposed and vulnerable, and at the same time so safe.

The door to the bedroom was open and he could see the silhouette of the Mark VII standing empty, as if Tony was some kind of high-tech cicada.

He arranged his limbs lotus-style on the floor, looking at his life from a carefully calculated distance.

Normally after an incident his brain was in high gear calculating factors of risk and mileage, once the post-transformation disorientation and disgust had finally worn away.  How to minimize damage, where to run next.  The best ways not to get captured, arrested, or likewise trapped in any way – not because that bore any real threat, but because of the damage he would do if he changed under that kind of duress.

He had made the change yesterday _on purpose_ , right out in daylight in front of the world, and the consequences were so staggeringly different from normal that he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.

There were people looking out for him now.  He had if not friends then acquaintances in high places.  That was why the US military wasn’t currently taking down the front doors of Stark Tower with a battering ram, and why when he attempted a Google image search of himself the results came up surprisingly blank.  The only thing that worried him was that he’d traded his personal freedom in exchange for SHIELD’s protection and misdirection.

…but then there was Tony.  Because he had a feeling that Tony, with every power he possessed, would not let SHIELD get to him if he could help it.  And he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

 _Am I ok with letting someone else protect me_ , he wondered to himself, _with letting someone else take the heat?_

_If I am ok with that, what can I do in exchange?_

There was a soft _ping_ as the elevator doors opened behind him, shedding a warm glow into the penthouse briefly before closing and leaving him in the halo of a smaller source of light.

“Gotta admit,” Tony said, taking a seat on the floor next to him, “of all the places you could’ve been in the Tower I didn’t expect to find you here.”

He looked and smelled exhausted, and Bruce felt a wave of sympathy combined with gratitude that Tony was willing to let Bruce see that he was exhausted.

“It’s a work in progress, obviously,” Tony continued.  “But I’ve been thinking, hey, as long as the place got smashed up anyway, why not make some refurbishments?  Add some tailored, Hulk-proof lab space, for example?  Just wait, when you get back, ‘s gonna be unrecognizable.”  He ran his hand lovingly over the cracked tile next to them.  “Think I’m gonna keep this, though.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him.  “Don’t you dare.”

“No?  You don’t think it’s a fitting memorial?  ‘Rest in pieces.’  I think it really adds that extra something special to the décor.”

“Well,” Bruce relented, “it’s your Tower.”

“Is it?  You know, most of my name fell off in the trans-dimensional kerfuffle.  Got knocked off.  I think it’s having a pretty major identity crisis.  Maybe I should just hand it over to Pepper.  Potts Tower.  …or maybe I could set up some space on these upper floors for the A-team, y’know, for our new little dysfunctional family.  So they all have a place to stay if they visit the city.  Huh.”  He went quiet for a few seconds.  “You know, I really like that idea.  I mean, the ‘A’ is already on there, it’s the only thing left.  I like that.  Coulson would’ve…”  He seemed to suddenly remember himself, cleared his throat and went silent again.

“It’s ok, Tony,” Bruce said quietly.  “I didn’t really know him.  But don’t let that be a reason not to talk about him.”

“I-”  Tony sighed.  “I don’t wanna crowd you with residual grief.  I don’t.  Not when you’re going to be gone so soon.  But-”  He brought his knees to his chest, hands wrapped around his ankles.  “I’m so angry that we can’t even properly mourn him, that all we got was a few minutes in Central Park.  No funeral, no memorial service, around most of the other agents it feels like we’re not even supposed to say his name.  …I’m so angry that he’s dead.”  He lowered his head to his knees.  “He shouldn’t be dead, Bruce.”

“…is it ok if I touch you?”

Tony gave a short nod and Bruce wrapped an arm over his shoulder, scooted closer to him.

“’M sorry,” Tony mumbled into his knees.  “I’ll try not to be weird.  These next few days.”

“Tony, for god’s sake.  You don’t need to censor yourself for me – please _don’t_ , just – don’t do that.”  He squeezed a little tighter.  "...how's Pepper?"

"Oh.  You know.  You're not the only superhuman I pal around with."  Tony raised his head and smiled weakly.  "She's shook up on the inside but she just plows ahead.  Maybe it's good for us right now that we're so busy."  He let out a long, heavy exhale.  "Can I - will you be ok if we-"

"You want to be with her tonight, right?  Yeah, that's ok, I figured."  Even as he spoke, level and calm, he felt an enormous wave of jealousy rear up inside of him.  He shot it a strong glare internally and quashed it down.  "I've got a room, I've got Jarvis.  I'm good.  And hey," he ventured, "I can jack off now without worrying that Steve will hear me through the wall."

Tony appreciated that just as Bruce had hoped, snorting quiet laughter.  He lifted a hand to twine his fingers with Bruce’s.  “I do have some bad news I need to tell you,” he said after a moment.

“Better get it over with, then.”

Tony gave a heavy exhale.  “Pepper needs to finish up a few things in D.C., because of all the rigmarole this whole portal thing made.  She’ll be flying the jet back tomorrow.”

Unfortunate, but it didn’t seem all that devastating.  “That’s too bad,” Bruce said helpfully.  “I was looking forward to spending more time with her, I really was.”

“Oh – it’s not that, she’ll only be gone for another day or so and then she’ll be back in California.  It’s just that – she’s taking the jet, Bruce.  She needs it more than we do.”

Bruce waited, patiently.  Tony fixed him with a serious look.

“Bruce, we’re going to have to fly commercial.”

Bruce waited another few seconds, realized that this was, in fact, the bad news, and burst out laughing.

“Glad you’re taking it so well,” Tony said icily, and Bruce caught his breath.

“I’m sorry, I just thought – I’ve flown commercial before, Tony.”

“Then you know,” Tony said, eyes piercing, “you understand that it’s one of the worst experiences imaginable-”  At Bruce’s snort, he continued.  “Ok, fine, maybe not for you, whatever, but I wasn’t expecting you to be so glib about this, it’s one of the hardest things _ever_ to do while keeping a low profile.”

“Hm.”  Bruce reflected on that.  “I’ve never had any trouble with it, but then my face – well, this one anyway – isn’t as famous as yours.  Honestly, I – I think it’s – kind of…fun?” he said, faltering under Tony’s disbelieving stare.

“Are you five,” Tony muttered.  “Fucking _fun_.  Maybe at least traveling with you I’ll catch some of your disgusting childlike wonder or something.”

“Uh.  Well.  There is one thing.”  Bruce coughed.  “I am a literal flight risk.”  Tony’s eyes went round and Bruce quickly assured him, “No, no, it’s going to be fine.  I have a strategy for this.  It just means I might not be as…fun…to travel with.  And I’m also going to need some things, most of them you can get between any corner pharmacy and whole foods store, but I’ll need them at least six hours before we leave-”

“Holy shit, Bruce, is that how you fly safely, you _drug_ yourself?”

“Don't worry, I’ve got it down to a science.  How long’s the flight?”

“…’bout five hours.”

“Perfect.  Easy-peasy.  I’m used to having to time it for cross-continental so this’ll be a breeze.  If I shoot you a list yet tonight can you help me get what I need with your Stark magic?”

“...’Stark magic?’”

“It sounds nicer than ‘rich white privilege.’”

That got a smile out of him.  “Bruce, I can get you anything legal and a few things that aren’t.”

“My hero.”  Bruce leaned over to kiss his scratchy cheek.

“So…what level are we talking here, am I gonna have to deal with you trying to brush spiders off my shirt the whole flight?”

“Let’s just say that if someone tries to hijack us, all I’ll be able to do is giggle at them.”

“…I don’t know how much giggling I’m going to be able to take.”

“Honestly I’ll probably end up sleeping most of the way there.”

“So help me, Banner, if I have to enlist a troop of salarymen and soccer moms to help carry you off the plane-”

“Tony.  Relax.”  Bruce let their heads come together with a gentle _thunk_.  “We’ll get through it, it’s going to be fine.  I am going home with you,” and he couldn’t keep the awe out of his voice, saying that – he had to repeat it one more time to make himself believe it.  “I’m going _home_ with you.  Just think about that – get me on and off that plane however you need to, and take me back to your place.”

Tony turned a look on him, long and intense, that as far as he knew could’ve meant any one of a dozen things.  He held his face steady as he looked back, even as his heart gave a twitch of mixed worry and excitement.

“…you’re gonna have to start using words, I’m afraid,” Bruce finally told him.  “I got nothing.”

He was only a little disappointed when instead of talking to him Tony kissed him.  It was deep, searing, and involved several parts of his body getting better acquainted with the floor.

“You think this means I’m letting you off the hook?” he panted the moment Tony went up for air.

“The thing I wanna say,” Tony said, catching his own breath, “it’s the thing, you know, the one I don’t think you’re ready to hear yet.”

He loosened his grip on Tony’s hips.  “Oh.”

“Yeah.  And besides I think – I think what I need, what I’m gonna have to do for a while to keep from completely losing it – I have to act like this past week never happened.  Except for you,” he added quietly between brushes of his lips on Bruce’s face.  “Except for the parts with you in them.”

“Ok,” Bruce promised, his own voice gone so quiet it was hardly there at all.  “Ok, I can do that,” and so saying he let himself get swept up for a few minutes in kisses, in the gentle weight of Tony pressing into him, until time lapsed into a heavy silence and they simply held on to each other in the dark.

~*~

So it was that Bruce Banner found himself the next afternoon cozied up in a window seat in coach, seated next to the grouchiest Tony Stark he’d ever seen, with more drugs coursing through his system than the average person his age took in an entire year.

Tony had been grumpy when he’d come in to wake Bruce up, toting a plastic shopping bag whose contents he complained were going to get one of his interns put on a watch list.  He’d been grumpier still instructing Bruce in the ways of casual paparazzi-dodging incognito, which in his book seemed to consist mostly of oversized baseball caps and sunglasses.  Bruce decided for himself, though he wasn’t really all that afraid of being recognized, to keep the overnight shadow of stubble on his face.  “You could always shave,” he suggested to Tony.  “I don’t think there’s anybody else alive on the planet with that specific facial hair.”  The look Tony gave him at that was so horrified and hurt that Bruce made himself a solemn promise on the spot never to mention it again.

By the time they went through airport security, Tony had reached a level of grumpiness that was truly staggering to behold.  The glare he shot at the attendant who ID’d him as the young man’s jaw slowly dropped and an exclamation started to form on his lips was so cataclysmically withering that Bruce was able to sneak his homebrew tranquilizers through the x-ray, tucked neatly away with the rest of his liquid luggage in a travel-sized shampoo bottle, without the slightest hitch.

Now Tony was rigid, nails digging into the armrests, all but snarling over in the seat next to him, while Bruce was watching New York state turn into a patchwork quilt of buildings and yards and roads.  Bruce couldn’t come within an inch of sympathy grump, not for the life of him.  The view was great, he was wearing new, comfortable clothes that SHIELD had been forced to pay for, and he had a pair of replacement reading glasses along with a couple of Vonnegut novels acquired at the airport nestled with the rest of his worldly goods in his knapsack.  Life was pretty ok.

“Tony,” he said sleepily.  “The worst is over.  Re _lax_.”

Tony was momentarily distracted from the eye-war he’d been determinedly not having with the middle-aged woman across the aisle.  “Easy for you to say,” he mumbled, “Better Living through Chemistry over there.  I should’ve just carried you home.”

“Hmm, yeah, _that_ would’ve been low-stress.”  A short giggle burst out of him.  The woman on the other side of Tony shot him a glance, heavily lipsticked mouth pursed in a straight line.

“Oh god it’s already starting,” Tony said on one miserable breath.  “The giggling.”

“I’m sorry, I was just picturing you carrying me – in one of the suits – and me _transforming-_ ”

“Hm yeah, that’s hi-lar-ious,” Tony shot back in a whispered hiss, “and you wanna maybe stop talking about it, mister completely ordinary regular person, hm?  Here?  Maybe shut the hell up?”

“Sorry,” Bruce said, and he’d meant for it to be a whisper but even to his ears it came out pretty loud.  Tony made a small sound of suffering, then almost jumped through the roof at a loud _bing_ followed by some kind of generic announcement from the cabin, something about expected turbulence – it all sounded garbled to Bruce.

“You’re scared,” he blurted out, and there was some small part of him that realized he shouldn’t have said that, but there were a lot more parts of him and counting that didn’t care about things like _shouldn’t_ or much of anything else.

The glare Tony shot him was almost as withering as the one he’d given airport security.  “I’m used to being my own pilot, ok?  I know _I’m_ good at it and worst case I know the people I hire are good at it.  I’ve got no idea about the yahoos flying this thing.” 

Bruce stared back at him, bottom lip pinched between two fingers, and thought about Tony Stark, about flying, responsibility, the sundry reasons someone of his backstory might have for not trusting things he didn’t make and drive himself.  He also thought about the vibrations beneath his feet, the dull roar holding them up, worried now that each little jump of the plane might be making Tony nervous, and noticing the muscles of Tony’s throat as he swallowed and how even those massive sunglasses couldn’t hide the distinct angles of his profile and it was amazing how many things he could think about within almost an instant, human brains were _neat._

“…what?” Tony snapped, startling him out of his slack-faced reverie.

Bruce let out the first thing at the front of his mind.  “Even when you’re pissy you’re still really freaking handsome.”

The words were a little slurred, making him laugh at himself again.  Tony’s head hit the back of his seat with a sigh.

“Dear god, just let this be a fast five hours.”

Bruce moved his left hand, tentatively, to cover Tony’s right.  Tony flinched at the first contact, his head jerking back to look at Bruce, maybe ready with some kind of admonishment, but it died in the air.  Bruce watched with mesmerized interest as the tension lines softened behind those stupid glasses, and felt Tony’s fingers move apart to allow their hands to intertwine. 

The woman across the aisle shot them another intense glance, and Bruce gave her a dreamy little wave with his free hand.  She looked down again but he caught a small smile blooming and felt a pleasant echo of it on his own face.

Life was _awesome_.  Tony’s hand felt good and people could _fly._

“There he goes,” Tony said, quietly resigned.  Bruce nodded and hummed agreement as his eyelids got unbearably heavy.

~*~

_You can spend all your time making money,_

_You can spend all your love making time,_

_If it all fell to pieces tomorrow_

_Would you still be mine?_

For a moment he was six years old and sleepy-eyed in the backseat, listening not so much to the radio as the blessed silence, the lack of a fight, from the front.

Then as his brain came back to him in pieces he remembered that he was actually in the front seat, thousands of miles away from childhood.  Tony was behind the wheel of yet another expensive-looking car.  The top was down, there was wind in his face, and he could smell ocean salt.  Tony was singing along so far under his breath that it seemed like an autonomic response to the music, like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.  His voice was a bit tuneless, but that didn’t stop Bruce from faking sleep for just a little longer to keep listening.

_And when you’re looking for your freedom_

_Nobody seems to care,_

_And you can’t find the door,_

_Can’t find it anywhere…_

“Didn’t peg you for a Henley fan,” he finally said.

“This is more Meisner’s showpiece,” Tony responded automatically, “although Henley did help with the writing, but that’s Meisner on the vocals.  Anyway, it’s not the best but that doesn’t mean it’s no good.  Welcome back to the land of the living-slash-sober, doctor.”

“Be honest, now.  How hard was it to get me off the plane?  Because I have no actual memory of how I came to be here.”

Tony laughed through his teeth.  He had ditched the hat and glasses and looked infinitely happier now that he was back in the driver’s seat.  “You were delightfully cooperative, actually.  I steered and prodded and along you went.  A little haphazardly, maybe, but smiling all the way.  How do you feel?”

“Fine.  Kinda cloudy-brained but that’s wearing off quick.”

“No headache, no nothing?”

“Nope.”

“God, that’s an incredible metabolism.  I’m a little jealous.  Only a little, though; I could burn through my fortune just trying to get a good buzz going.  …Can you even get drunk?”

“Oh yes,” Bruce assured him.  “I just don’t _stay_ there very long.”

“I’d love to see that.  I bet you are the cutest drunk.  I mean, that’s my first guess, I’m not wrong, right, you’re not a – a-”

“Not an angry drunk,” Bruce advised.  “If I were, I wouldn’t drink.  Period.  I don’t know about ‘cute’ though.  I tend to get very deep in thought; I have what I think are these brilliant revelations and I scribble them down, and then when I read over them in the morning they’re utter bullshit.”

“That sounds pretty fucking cute to me.”

“All a matter of perspective I suppose.  Anyway, don’t go trying to get me drunk tonight, what time even is it?”  He squinted at the digital clock on the dashboard.  “Eleven thirty?”

“Oh, I won’t,” Tony said casually even as he took one hand off the wheel to squeeze Bruce’s thigh.  “You’ll need your wits about you.  As I fully intend to keep you up until sunrise.”

“…Ah.”

“In more ways than one.”

“Yeah, I got it, thanks.”

“Y’know, if you’re ok with that.”

Bruce swallowed hard.  “…I am _extremely_ well rested, having just slept through the entirety of a five-hour flight.”

Tony cracked a grin so big it was nearly audible.  Bruce caught the hand on his leg in his own, squeezing Tony’s fingers and running his thumb over his palm.  Eyes still fixed firmly on the road, Tony squeezed back, trapping Bruce’s thumb in his fist before letting his own fingers wander to trace lightly over his wrist.

“How much farther?” Bruce asked with catastrophic failure at casualness, his voice coming out high and thready.

“’Bout thirty minutes,” Tony returned easily, just the slightest quirk in the corner of his mouth.

Bruce gave a serious nod and shifted in his seat.  Tony’s fingers had settled over the tremor in his wrist, pressing in and coaxing a steady increase in speed.

Bruce gave up entirely, deciding he had better thing to do than trying to preserve any sense of dignity.  “Is there someplace in between where you could, I don’t know, where it would be safe, a convenient place you could park?”

Tony pressed his lips together like he was trying to hold in laughter, and Bruce let his head fall back against the seat with a snort, his eyes clamping shut in embarrassment.  “Wow.  Ok, yeah, really?  Never mind, forget I-”

Then he felt the motion, the reduction in speed and the turn.  “Lot of beach parking along this stretch,” Tony said casually as Bruce allowed his eyes to open.  “Gonna be pretty much abandoned at this time of night, unless anyone else has the same idea – and – nope, we’re in the clear.”

The sound of the Pacific was drowned out by the rushing in his ears as Tony pulled into one of a long row of empty spaces.  “Do you need a permit, or registration-”

“You’re missing the much more important question,” Tony said, one hand turning the key in the ignition while the other undid his seatbelt.  “That being, ‘Do I actually care?’”  He twisted himself around in his seat to look at Bruce, eyes glittering, hands coming up to cup his face.  Bruce’s pulse fluttered hard in his throat.

“I didn’t want to wait either,” Tony said, soft and low.

There was a trick Bruce could do.  It was useful for dealing with the vast echoing caverns of noise inside his head, and while he’d tried many things over the course of years, given at least a fair fighting chance to every form of meditation he stumbled across, it was the only thing that consistently worked.

He’d never had any success at emptying his mind.  It was, he suspected, impossible, because it was a place too full to ever be properly emptied, with too much lurking out of reach in the corners only to surge forward and choke him whenever he tried to move everything else out of the way.  But he could focus.  He could let one thing, however small, become big enough to fill his whole head.  It could be as simple as a ray of sunlight slanting through a windowpane, or the rhythm of his own breath.

In the milliseconds between the first touch of hands to his face and the press of their mouths, Bruce was made of lust and longing and raw, terrifying emotional vulnerability; of doubt and confidence, fear and bravado; of chemistry and psychology and elementary particles; of a voice forever asking even during the most intense moments of happiness, _but do you deserve this?_

Then he took a breath in, shifted, centered, and Tony became the universe.

It was the way Tony kissed, the weight of lips and the burn of sharp hair, the soft, sweet feeling of the inside of his mouth.  It was the smell of warm sweat and warmer skin.  It was the texture of muscles trembling and reaching under his fingers.  Nothing else existed beyond that, beyond the shared heat of their bodies and the wild difference in the speed of their heartbeats.

Bruce wasn’t conscious of moving, didn’t even realize he’d worked his way out of his own seatbelt, until his ass bumped the steering wheel and the horn let out a short, loud blare across the empty parking lot.

It was more than enough to jolt his focus but the laughter came naturally, resonating through him alongside the shaking that came from Tony’s own laughter underneath him.  Tony tried to reach through the pile of limbs they’d turned into to pull the lever that would roll the seat back, succeeding only in tangling them together still worse, which made them laugh harder.  Those joyful full-body spasms felt so nice against him that Bruce didn’t want it to end, wanted to keep Tony in stitches as long as he could, but Tony got a grip on himself and the lever, and at least that gave Bruce just enough room to put a knee to either side of him and pull him into another kiss.  

The angle was a little awkward, the space cramped, and he felt as if he were made entirely of elbows, knees, and general sharp corners.  But Tony pushed up into the kiss, digging his fingers into Bruce’s hips, and it all felt so damn _good_ that it was easy to refocus, even if most of his attention was now centering by default on the heat pooling in his groin.  He leaned in further to press himself against Tony’s stomach and Tony squirmed, trying his best to line their hips up even as clever fingers drifted up to Bruce’s top shirt button.

“’S not gonna work,” he mumbled into Tony’s neck before taking the skin gently between his teeth.

“C’mon doc,” Tony gasped, hands darting from button to button and leaving a trail of exposed skin in their wake.  “You’re the master physicist here, you’ve got no solution for me?”

“Hm.  Maybe.  Not willing to give this up just yet though.”  He tilted Tony’s chin and smiled down at him, bringing their faces close enough that their lips brushed when he spoke.  “I like making you have to reach up to kiss me.”

Tony groaned and abandoned his work on Bruce’s shirt in order to push himself up with both hands as hard and as high as he could, but Bruce leaned back as he did and kept their lips from meeting.

“Besides,” he added over Tony’s hoarse whine, “this way it’s a lot easier to-”  Tony’s arms shot up automatically as Bruce’s fingers slid under the hem of his shirt.  “…exactly.”  He slid the cotton over Tony’s torso, letting his fingertips trail slowly over skin as he went until Tony was squirming again.  As soon as he’d worked the shirt off completely and tossed it into the passenger seat, Tony flicked open the last few buttons and pushed Bruce’s own shirt off his shoulders, and Bruce figured that was worth the reward of letting himself be pulled back in and thoroughly kissed.

He squeezed Tony’s thigh and sucked his tongue, fumbling with his other hand to the right of the seat over buttons and knobs until he found what he was searching for in the form of a second lever.  He yanked once, hard, and the seat back shot down, sending both of them hurtling with it, resulting in a sudden and intense amount of skin-on-skin that made them moan in perfect unison.

Tony wasted no time shimmying down so they were hip to hip, arching up into Bruce and grinding on him until Bruce pushed back hard against that insistent firmness, pressing into Tony over and over with smooth rolls of his hips until they found a rhythm and angle together that was so effective he thought he might come just from that and _god_ it was amazing how far Tony could get his tongue inside of him considering he had all of Bruce’s weight holding him down.

“Am I crushing you?” he panted between collisions.

“Yeah,” Tony rasped, drawing one leg up and wrapping it around him to bring him still closer.  “Please don’t stop.”

Torn between not wanting to cause bodily harm and the way the words _don’t stop_ sounded in Tony’s voice, he tried to push himself up a little on his forearms so at least his torso wasn’t flattening the man underneath him.  And Tony just yanked him back, wrapped his arms around him tight enough that Bruce heard bones crackling.  Tony didn’t have super-strength but he was by no means weak.

The rim of the arc reactor pressed into his chest hard enough to hurt, a bright burst of pain right at his center that was not at all unpleasant, and Bruce was struck with the thought that nobody had ever been this close to him before, never in any of his memories, not even other lovers.  He could feel Tony’s pulse in four entirely separate places.

Even Tony had never clung to him like this except for…

Tony pushed up against him, eyes squeezed shut, mouth parted but no sound coming out.

Except for the time right after New York, when Tony had held him so, so tight, his whole body tense with some unspoken need, and Bruce had been too afraid that it would be the last time they would touch at all to properly restrain himself, to hold back and be gentle the way he should have.

Bruce made soothing sounds at him, slowed the rocking of his hips as he dug his fingers into Tony’s hair, kissed his jaw, the ridge of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth.  “It’s ok,” he whispered before he could think much about it.  “I’ve got you.”

Tony opened his eyes and stared up into him, stilling completely.  Bruce looked back down at him, catching his breath, listening to the ocean crashing and thinking _wow, we are both getting pretty shitty at pretending._

One Tony goes up into the sky, and another one comes back down.

“I’ve got you,” he said again, wriggling gently out of Tony’s vicelike grip so he could push himself back up into more of a crouch.  He undid the button and zipper on Tony’s fly, then slid his hands under his back to encourage Tony to lift his hips so he could tug his clothes down far enough to get one hand on his ass and the other wrapped around his cock.

Tony’s head thumped against the seat, his eyes fluttering shut.  He was so wet that the first few strokes came easily, wet enough that Bruce could twist his hand until Tony started moving again, thrusting as his teeth dug hard into his bottom lip.  He lifted one hand to clutch at Bruce’s upper arm and tangled the other in the mess of hair on his chest, tugging just hard enough to let Bruce know where he was.

“How does it feel?” Bruce asked, aiming for sultry and feeling ridiculous but baiting with an open-ended question nonetheless, desperate for Tony to talk, to say _anything_.

“Fuck,” Tony responded obligingly.  “That’s good, Bruce, that’s _too_ good, I-”  Bruce rubbed his thumb hard over the head and the words gave out, breaking open into a long groan that made Bruce in turn rub harder and Tony kept filling the fearful silence with gasps and breathy _ah_ s and a few heartfelt repetitions of Bruce's name.

“I can’t,” Tony finally managed to stammer, “I’m gonna-”  Bruce tightened his hand as hard as his strength would safely allow and Tony’s words broke off again into a groan.  He let go of Bruce’s arm to push him back.  “Bruce, _please_ , not – not here – the interior-”

Bruce took pity on him, stopped his hand and shook with laughter even as he thought _oh thank god, there he is._

“Shut up,” Tony panted with a hint of a smile, “it’s a bitch to clean.  Not to say you should stop, just let me – I’ll get out if I have to-”

Bruce fixed him with a lazy smile to hide the relief that threatened to burst up out of him.  _There’s the guy I met at forty thousand feet who struts and banters, who zaps the Hulk in the ribcage right on the tail of “hello.”_

“You could come all over _my_ interior,” he said, then pushed back and unceremoniously squeezed himself onto what little floor there was before pulling Tony forward by the hips so he could swallow him to the hilt.

Tony _wailed_ , perfect and pure and loud, sending a pulse of warmth through Bruce’s chest as his cock twitched in sympathy.  A few jerky thrusts were all it took before he was spasming and coming down Bruce’s throat.

Bruce waited until Tony’s body stopped twitching and slumped back against the seat before pulling his mouth back and carefully making his way up, kneeling again with a leg to either side of the man beneath him.  Tony caught his breath for a few seconds of blissed-out silence, then opened his eyes and touched Bruce’s face, running a thumb over the line of his mouth.

“How the hell,” he said heavily.  “How are you so good at that.  Like, did you just leave your gag reflex in Asia?”  Bruce caught his hand and kissed it, chuckling softly.  “Seriously though,” Tony continued, “is that it, did you just abandon it on the other side of the ocean?  Is there some kind of secret technique for this, like you just meditate it away?  And if so, teach me.”

“Wow.”  Bruce gave his fingers a friendly nip and then let them go.  “Don’t take this the wrong way but – aficionado that you are, I’m kind of surprised there’s anything I can do that you _can’t_.”

“Not for lack of trying, believe me,” Tony said woefully.  “Reflex has always been really strong whether I like it or not.  Makes bigger guys quite the challenge.  Not saying that you’re by any means tiny-”

Bruce gave him a dry smirk.  “I have absolutely zero self-consciousness about my size,” he assured Tony, “maybe due in part to the fact that every so often I’m bigger than anybody else on the goddamn planet.”

“Did you just.”  Tony blinked.  “Oh my god.  Hulk dick joke.  I have wanted to make a Hulk dick joke since like _meeting_ you but I figured it was probably insensitive and I am now considering that barrier well and truly lifted.”

“…shit.  Really opened Pandora’s box with that one.”

“You really did.  In all seriousness, if this is a teachable technique, than I am your awed and willing pupil.”

Bruce shook his head.  “To be honest it is kind of a mind over matter thing.  The reflex isn’t useful, so I ignore it.”

“And that works.”

“For me it does.  I have a lot of practice with focus.”

“So you essentially do just meditate it away.  …god.  You are so cool.  Get out of the car.”

“Wait, what?”

“Out.  Of the car.  I need to restore some feeling into my everything.  And you’re going to need something to lean against.”

Having no desire to argue, Bruce opened the door and climbed out a little unsteadily as normal circulation started up again in his own body.  He could see by the dim light that this car was some kind of a brushed metallic, maybe champagne or silver.  Tony followed shortly after, doing up his pants and shaking his hands loosely at the wrist a few times before turning a sharp gaze back on Bruce and slamming the car door behind him, without looking, with theatrical gusto.

With smooth steps and gentle touches along the waist, almost as if they were dancing, Tony switched their positions and backed Bruce up against the car.  He let one hand drop from waist to inner thigh, tracing hard against the line of Bruce’s muscle until coming to rest on the bulge in his pants.  He set a torturously slow pace, lapping his tongue at the most sensitive, vulnerable part of Bruce’s neck as he felt him up.

Bruce tipped his head back with a sigh, feeling exposed in a way that was by turns worrisome and thrilling.  “With my luck a cop’ll show up,” he murmured.

Tony increased pressure.  “We’re not doing anything illegal.”

Bruce straightened up to cock an eyebrow at him.  “Not yet.  …unless you are, in fact, parked illegally.”

Tony ceased stroking in favor of unbuckling Bruce’s belt and easing his fly open.  “I’m confident I can talk my way out of anything an officer of the law in this precinct can dish out.  I mean here I am, local celebrity, just happened to by passing by, and this revered physicist was in _obvious_ need of some roadside assistance-”

Bruce shut him up with a single crush of lip on lip.  “You gonna spend all night on hypotheticals, or put that mouth of yours to good use?”

He was immediately self-conscious when the words had flown.  It was a bit of a gamble, and he’d never said anything like it before in his life.  His instincts were right though – Tony _loved_ it.  His eyes lit up and he dropped slowly to his knees, tugging Bruce’s pants and underwear down with him as he went.  He kissed and licked and sucked at Bruce’s cock all over, a thing as delicious to watch as it was to feel, before finally letting him slide deep into his mouth.

Even through the sensation he felt a strong indignation that Tony should have any insecurities about this.  What he lacked in depth he more than made up for in technique.  Bruce was so caught up in how wonderful it felt that it took him a few seconds to register Tony’s hands guiding Bruce’s own to grip his hair, paired with a pointed glance upward that was an obvious invitation to take control.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bruce insisted, scratching gently at his scalp.

Tony slid his mouth off with a satisfying _pop_.  “I won’t let you,” he assured, “can direct you with my tongue.  Just don’t go too fast or too hard and I’ll be fine.”

“Ok,” Bruce relented, letting out a sharp exhale as Tony slid back over him.  “Squeeze my leg if you need me to back off.”

Tony hummed agreement as Bruce started to move, which felt so good that he did some brief brainstorming for other things he could say that Tony would agree on while his cock was in his mouth, and then Tony did something with his tongue that both let Bruce know exactly how deep he should thrust and rendered him incapable of thinking about much of anything.

Just when he thought it couldn’t get any better it did, ridges of hard palate rubbing against him as Tony desperately tried to take more, and before the well-mannered parts of his brain could speak up and let him know he should ease off Tony had pulled away, coughing and sputtering on all fours.

“For god’s sake, Tony, don’t be a hero,” Bruce stammered before the ludicrousness of that statement could properly sink in, and the laughter burst out of Tony like a gunshot, mixing with the coughing until his eyes watered.

“I am never,” he said between gasps for air, “letting you forget this.”

“I won’t,” Bruce agreed.  “I really won’t oh _Jesus_ ” as Tony took him back faster than he was ready for and being careful didn’t stop it from being amazing and Bruce wondered if a person could come just from sheer overwhelming fondness for another person.

There was need for a lot more data collection and a much better controlled testing environment, but the answer appeared to be at least a partial _yes._

He watched Tony pull carefully back and swallow, then allowed himself to sink trembling to the ground, butt on the asphalt and back against the cool body of the car.  Every particle of him felt soothed and satisfied and beautifully breakable.  He reached out for Tony, tugging him slowly in by the arms so he could kiss him, gently lick into his mouth to taste his own bitter saltiness paired with Tony's sweetness.

Tony settled back against him after their mouths parted, tilting his head from side to side to relieve the cricks in his neck, running his fingers over the hair on Bruce's forearms after Bruce wrapped around him.  His back felt almost as cool as the car behind him.

"Hey Bruce," he said, awake and alert after a few moments of silence.

"Yeah?" Bruce breathed warm into his ear, purposefully making him shiver.

"You wanna go back to my place and do that all over again?"

He pulled Tony harder against his chest, making a sound halfway between a laugh and a purr, pleasantly dozy with afterglow.  He could feel Tony's smile in the squeeze of his hands.

"...I'm gonna take that as a 'yes.'"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Take It to the Limit” by Randy Meisner, Don Henley, Glenn Fry, 1975


	2. Coming Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiiiiiiii there.
> 
> I have no excuses. My promises are empty lies. The only promise I'll make from now on is not to promise anything, and simply to keep writing if I am the correct combination of capable and willing, which I very much hope to continue to be.

It had been easy to forget when Tony was in the helicarrier lab with him in t-shirts and jeans how he was absolutely filthy fucking rich.

“Christ,” Bruce said articulately, “on a cracker.”  There was no need to squint in the dark at Tony’s domicile – the circa-’70 behemoth of a thing was extremely well-illuminated.  “It’s like the Enterprise lost an elegant fight with the side of a cliff.”

Tony gave a snort of laughter.  “Ok, that’s – yeah, that’s fair.”

“Is that a _helipad_?”

“Yup.”

“Why do you have a fucking helipad?”

“For the helicopters, generally.”

“Is that a common occurrence?  …do you _own_ a helicopter?”

“Tsch.  Do I own a helicopter.”  Tony pulled the car into the shadow of one of the looming white discs that made up the structure, greeted once again by Jarvis ( _“Glad to have you both back at home base, sir!”_ ) as he extended his finger to a panel that scanned for prints.  A garage door-sized portion of the outer wall lifted and slid flat, giving the car room to pull forward before closing again behind them.

“You’re just – Jesus.”  Bruce had been in public parking garages with narrower lanes and worse lighting.  “You’re gonna need to give me some time to adjust, here.  In my last stint on land I lived in the poorest part of a city where the disparities between rich and poor are even more intense than in New York – or California, for that matter.”

“…oh.  Fuck.”  Tony pulled into a parking space at the end of a row of vehicles Bruce tried very hard not to count (there were nine).  “I really never – this must seem pretty gross to you.  Hell, _I_ must seem pretty gross to you, I mean, at times?”

“Hm, yeah.”  Bruce caught his eye and gave him a pointedly sarcastic look.  “You’re a really repulsive person; it’s, well, it’s been a hurtle, to say the least.”

Tony smirked back.  “It is patently unfair,” he said, “that a mouth that gorgeous can put forth the level and quality of sass-”

“I think you’re a pretty stellar guy,” Bruce assured him.  He coughed gently to clear his throat.  “You know.  For a rich person.”

“…and _there_ it is.”

“Hey, I’m just saying.  As a group, you tend to make it hard to get things done for anybody outside of your tax bracket.  Except, of course, for when you don’t.  Judging from your recent company history, I’d mark you as one of those rich guys who’s trying to make a positive difference and therefore keeps getting blocked by other rich guys.”

Tony tapped a finger against his bottom lip.  “Huh.  Now that I think about it, almost all of my worst enemies have indeed been other rich guys.”

“Yeah, that is not even remotely shocking to me.”

“Even Loki, if you want to get technical.  Monarchy, right?  Old money.  Also probably funded by some even worse wealthy alien benefactor, somewhere out there in the great beyond.”  He snorted.

“It’s not like I can really be one to judge, though,” Bruce amended, opening the door and rising from the car, throwing his duffel over his shoulder.  “It’s easy enough for me to harp on the guys with the money – I’ve never been one of them.  I have no idea what a sudden windfall could do to me.  I can’t say I wouldn’t build a stupidly large house with it, if I was the kind who settled.”

“Are you kidding me?”  Tony shut his own door behind him and dashed around to Bruce’s side.  “You’d probably donate it all on sight to create a hospital for three-legged puppies or something.  Jarvis, keep the lights down.”

“At the very least, I’d splurge on lab equipment.”

“See, _that’s_ the best part about being rich.  When I want to make something, the only limits are my own knowledge and imagination.”

“Nice tag line you have going there.”

“Right?  This house, for example – and if you want to get really technical, Dad was the rich asshole who _actually_ built it – this house is just an excuse.  The living-in parts are relatively small compared to the important stuff.  You know, the building-in parts.”

As his eyes began to adjust, Bruce could make out the shadows of worktables.  There was a steady background _whirrrrrr_ of servos and cooling fans.  “No,” Tony said sharply as Bruce took a few steps forward away from the parking area.  “Noyoudon’tnoyoudon’t.”  He threw his hands around Bruce’s face, making a blindfold out of his palms and gently leading him away.  “You’ll get the grand tour, don’t worry, but _tomorrow_.  When there’s sunlight and time and I haven’t just had to sit through a commercial flight.  There’s really only one room I’m interested in showing off to you right now.”

Bruce’s face went warm under Tony’s hands.  “Lead on, by all means.”

“…maybe two rooms.  Do you want to clean up first?  There’s nothing that makes me feel like I need a wash like flying commercial.”

Bruce nodded.  “I could go for a shower.”

“Ok, there’s going to be some stairs here.”  Tony removed his hands and Bruce quickly closed his eyes, let Tony pull him by the hands slowly forward, step by careful step, in what felt like a rising spiral.

“Loving all these circular motifs,” he said, stumbling a little, falling forward into Tony’s steady grip.  “It must look pretty cool for people who are allowed to see it.”

“All in good time.  Yeah, Dad was always very Walt Disney with the architecture – made anything he designed look like Tomorrowland, you can see it in the earliest expo blueprints from his twenties even.  Hell, it’s possible Walt copied _him_.  Wait until you see it in daylight.  Very green, too, I might add.  I’m proud to say we were off the grid even before I ran on batteries.”

“Mm, you know just what does it for me.  Tell me more.”

“Combination of solar, water, wind, and early nuclear experiments, when Dad was alive.  Of course that last one has since been replaced with arc energy.  Much safer.  Much less terrifying.  Better for enabling my high-energy hobbies.  You know how much it takes just to keep Jarvis running?”

“Just imagine the warehouse you would’ve needed for me in the eighties, sir.”

“Oh, I do.  It keeps me up some nights, J.  But you’re worth it.”

“I’m glad you think so, sir.”

“Damn right.  Gonna ask you for privacy mode for the rest of the night, though.  In fact, screw it, no alarm for the morning either.  We’re on staycation.”

“Very good.  I wish you both a most enjoyable evening.”

“He likes you,” Tony told Bruce, halting him at what he assumed was the top of the stairs with a squeeze of his hands.  “That regular verbal acknowledgment, that’s a good sign.”  He slid the strap of the duffel carefully off of Bruce’s shoulder.  “I…will be right…back.  Don’t move.”

Bruce stayed still, listening with a smile to the sounds of footfalls and rustling fabric.  It was less than a minute before Tony’s hands took his again, leading him a few steps further and into different lighting.  He had a sudden flashback to the helicarrier, to when they’d done this with their positions reversed - Tony, eyes shut, willing, trusting; Bruce guiding him carefully through his tiny quarters, heady with that mix of anxiety and courage he’d been steeped in ever since Tony came barreling into his life.

He thought he was starting to understand that curiosity, the driving force that prompted Tony to say things like _I wondered how it felt to be you._   He wondered about that too, from the other side – what the burn of his skin felt like, how many stray thoughts his overactive heartbeat gave away.  What the hell it was that Tony saw when he looked at him that kept him coming back.

Tony released his hands.  “Ok, you can open them now.”

Bruce complied.  He found himself in a bathroom, not enormous, but no less elegantly modern than he’d been expecting.  It was all cream and chrome and dark wood – toilet and sink to his left, deep bath with jets to the right, and in between him and the frosted glass of the shower door a naked, fully erect Tony.

Bruce’s hands lifted almost automatically to trace ribs and hips, and he sighed as he said, “This is going to completely ruin the mood but I need to pee like you would not believe.”

“Oh.  I would definitely believe, considering the last visit you made to the men’s room I had to come with you and practically hold you up.”  Tony slid the door of the shower open and pressed a few buttons on a nearby panel until water began to sluice from walls and ceiling that looked like natural stone.

Bruce’s already flushed face went a shade darker.  “Uh.  Sorry about that.”

“No sweat,” Tony returned lightly.  “What are friends for?  Come on in when you’re done.”  He stepped into the water and slid the glass door shut behind him.

Bruce dropped his pants, grateful that the shower door wasn’t see-through – in spite of whatever had transpired earlier he was _not_ at that level of comfort yet, not unmedicated.  All the same the sounds of falling water behind him were soothingly domestic.  When he’d finished, he took off his shoes and shucked off the rest of his clothes, leaving them in a neat pile near the sink before sliding the shower door open just wide enough to slink inside.

The water temperature was perfect, hot but not scalding, complemented by a bright glow overhead that felt like sunlight.  Tony was already soaping up, rubbing something into the fur under his arms that smelled of sandalwood, hair on his head sticking out in seven directions and streaked white with suds, cock still a pleasant half-hard.  “Hey,” he greeted Bruce warmly, eyes roving in appreciation as his hands moved over his chest.

“Hey yourself.”  The quality of the light made the marks on Tony’s skin pop, every scratch and bruise from New York, and all across his shoulders, clavicles, and neck, dozens of bright red bite marks.

“Tony.”  Bruce took in a deep breath of steam and soap, and carefully touched each mark.

“Hm?”  Tony looked down and gave a soft chuckle.  “Oh.  Yeah.  Little bit of a patchwork quilt right now, but it’ll heal.  Could’ve been worse.  We can’t all regenerate our entire epidermis after a fight.”

“These…”  He pressed his hand to Tony’s neck, skirting fingers over broken blood vessels.  “These are from me.”

Tony looked at him from under thick lashes, bottom lip caught between his teeth.  “Mm-hm.”

“Do they…hurt?”

A flicker of confusion passed over Tony’s eyes.  “Huh?  No.  No, of course not.  Maybe if you put pressure on them, but it would take a lot, like-”  He pushed hard against a particularly large mark at the top of his chest.  “That twinges just a little bit.  Now this-”  He jerked his finger at an angry-looking patch of red tinged with green on his torso, just underneath the fold of flesh on the left side of his chest.  “ _That’s_ what a bruise that hurts looks like.  C’mon, you’re the doctor here.”

Bruce cupped Tony’s chest, the fingers on his other hand drifting to trace the width of the mark.  “Yeah, that one’s going to hurt for a while, I’m afraid.”

“Didn’t come from you though.”

“Well…”  Bruce thought about how hard Tony’s body must have been jarred when Hulk caught him, falling at high speed.  “It might have.”

Tony’s face creased into an incredulous _what the hell_ look.  “Not complaining.  You want shampoo?  Anything more specific than shampoo?  What’s your regimen for those luscious locks?”

Bruce wrinkled his nose.  “My _regimen_?  You think my lifestyle allows for some kind of hair routine?  Or _any_ routine?  I’ll take plain shampoo and be grateful for it.”

“Two-in-one with conditioner?”

“Extra-grateful.”

Tony handed him a bottle.  “So what, your hair just does that?  Naturally?”

“Pretty much.”

Tony whistled.  “Lucky _bastard_.”  Bruce shook his head, but couldn’t help smiling back.

“Look,” he said as he squeezed an appropriate portion of shampoo into his hand and worked up a lather.  “Before you get me all distracted exchanging hair tips, I need to talk.”  He gestured with a soapy hand at the marks on Tony’s neck.  “About those.”

Tony got some more soap from another bottle and went to work on his legs, precariously balancing.  “You’re kinda fixating, here.  It’s ok.  Hickeys don’t hurt after the fact.”  

“It’s…more the fact itself that I’m concerned about, here.”

Tony sped up the motions of his hands, washing in double-time, before standing up straight and turning his full attention to Bruce.  “Ok.  I’m listening.”

Bruce gave his lathery hands one more pass through his hair before rinsing them off in one of the streams of water.  “I need to know.  That if I did hurt you – if I was ever too rough with you – that you would tell me.  You wouldn’t let it go in an effort to – I don’t know, spare my feelings, or anything like that.”

Tony’s brow crinkled.  “Look, big guy, I may not be superhuman, but that doesn’t mean I’m made of glass either.”

“Tony.”  Bruce sighed, louder than he’d meant to.  “This is not an attack on your dignity.  Do you…do you have any idea, really, how strong I am?  All the time?”

Tony shrugged.  “About as strong as Steve, I figured, on a good day.”

“Not quite, not quite Steve.  But close.”

“Strong enough to pick me up and throw me over your shoulder.”  Tony flashed a grin at him before closing his eyes and leaning back into the flow of the water, letting it wash the suds out of his hair and the last traces of soap off his skin, and Bruce got so caught up in contours, in the way Tony’s hair went dark and slick, in wondering how he’d managed to make the arc reactor so obviously waterproof, that for a moment he lost his grip on the conversation completely.

“Jesus,” he half-whispered, and then added quickly as if he’d only said it to highlight his frustration with the current topic, “I always have to hold back.  _Always_.  Do you get that?  I hate it.  But if I didn’t, I’d bruise everything I touched.  And I’m worried that…night before last, I didn’t hold back enough.”

“You didn’t break the skin,” Tony said instantly, unblinking.  “Not once, not any of these,” and he gestured with an index finger to the bruises on his neck.  “You must have been holding back a little.”

“Look, the point is I hurt you-”

“You didn’t hurt me any more than I wanted to be hurt.”

That squeezed a sharp exhalation out of Bruce, but he finished his thought.  “-without intending to.  I hurt you without intention.  …I don’t think I need to explain why that scares me.”

Tony gave a sharp nod.  “If you’re looking for reassurance here-”

“That would be the point, yes.”

“-you haven’t hit any of my limits yet.  And if you ever do, well shit, of course I’ll tell you.  I respect you enough for that.  Hell, I respect _myself_ enough.”

Bruce nodded in return, a little taken aback at the sheer amount of relief Tony’s response elicited.  “Good.  Thanks.”

Tony gestured towards the bottle of soap he’d used a few moments before.  “Want me to do you?”

“…what?  Oh.  Soap.  Sure.”

Tony picked the bottle up and squeezed a generous amount into his palm before rubbing his hands together, filling the warm air in the shower with the sharp sandalwood smell.  He rubbed his soapy hands against Bruce’s chest, using the carpet of hair there to get a foamy lather which he spread to Bruce’s shoulders.

“I think I needed it,” he said softly, slight crease in his brow.

“Needed…?”

Tony traced each hand down Bruce’s corresponding arm, spreading soap.  “It was like – you caught me.  And then you caught me again.  You had always been so careful, so – deliberate.  And it wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong.  That’s one part of you, and it’s a good one.  But then, feeling you like that, feeling you want something that much and not think so hard about it – you were so warm, and real, I – it was like, you caught me when I fell out of the sky, but I wasn’t back on the ground until you-”  He stopped moving, gave Bruce a hard look in the eye.  “Am I making any sense?”

Bruce tried to swallow the lump in his throat.  “I thought that was probably going to be the last time I ever got to touch you.”

Tony let out an exhalation so heavy it was almost a snort.  “Jesus, Bruce.”  He slipped his hands around and rubbed down Bruce’s back.  “For someone so intelligent you can be kind of a dumbass.”

It was the most natural thing in the world to kiss him, already encircled in his arms.  It was a little strange – shower kisses always were, now that he thought back on it, but it had been a long time since his last one.  It was damp and there was just a hint of soap.  Not the best, but still pretty great – and getting kissed enough to have favorite ways to do it, that was even better, especially when Tony squeezed a lot harder than necessary for the purpose of getting soap on his ass.

“Come to bed with me?” Tony murmured against his smile.

Bruce bumped their foreheads.  “How long have you been wanting to ask me that?”

“Pretty much forever.  Or, you know, for ten days.  Whatever.”

Bruce shook with something like soundless laughter.  “Tony,” he said seriously, tracing the other man’s bottom lip with his thumb, “there is nothing I want more than for you to take me to bed.”

“Fucking hell,” Tony said on a rushed breath, and kissed him again, any pretense of helping him wash up completely forgotten.

It took a hand on Tony’s chest gently shoving back to get him free (with the light shining between his fingers, water running tracks down the smooth surface, _how_ had he made it waterproof?) so that he could scoop up some of the residual froth from his chest and wash his legs fast enough that he may as well have let them be.  He shut his eyes reluctantly so he could step directly under the stream and rinse as Tony had done.

Unlike him, however, Tony didn’t pretend not to look, was ogling him shamelessly when Bruce opened his eyes.  He was fully hard again, cock flushed and curving up, nearly touching his belly, and for a moment all Bruce could think about was Tony with his head thrown back against the pillow, hands twisting in the sheets as Bruce sucked him.

“You done?” he asked, eyes still roving, and Bruce gave a rushed nod that sent that sent a spattering of droplets across the shower.  Tony flicked his fingers over the panel and the water ceased flowing.  He slid the door open to reach around the corner, and the next thing he knew Bruce was being assaulted with the softest, fluffiest towel he’d ever felt in his life.

Briefly blinded, he felt Tony’s hands affectionately rough on the other side of the towel doing their utmost to get his hair dry.  He made a muffled sound of feeble protest before Tony moved the towel down to his shoulders, smirking into his face, sneaking in a nibble of his bottom lip before darting away to grab a towel of his own.

When they were both as dry as they were going to get under the circumstances, Tony hung the towels back on the bar and took Bruce by the hand, actually grabbed his hand and led him like they were a couple of kids, through a doorway behind the bath kitty-corner to the one they had used to enter from the hallway.

Tony’s bedroom.  Tony Stark’s _room_.  It didn’t feel real.

It smelled like Tony, in the best of all possible ways.

It was elegantly sparse – nightstands, a few lamps casting a soft glow.  An enormous bed, at least a king – did they make beds bigger than king? – with a silky-looking pearl-grey comforter and piles of matching pillows.  Across from the bed, one vast window of curving glass with a telescope poised nearby on a tripod.  The last Bruce found unforgivably endearing, and when he stooped a little to peer out the window he could see the faintest line of light pollution on the horizon, but above that countless stars.

“There’s retractable tinting built in,” Tony explained as Bruce gaped at the sky.  “If you don’t want the sun in your eyes in the morning.  But at night, I like to leave it just like this.”

When he squinted he could make out the line of the side of the cliff the house rested on, and the dim crashing of the waves below.  “It’s beautiful.”

Tony took his other hand and tugged until they were standing face to face and hand in hand at the foot of the bed.  “The view’s pretty spectacular from over here, too.”

Bruce couldn’t meet Tony’s eyes, smiled stupidly at his own bare feet instead, overcome with a sudden inexplicable shyness.

“Hey.”  Tony let go of one of his hands so he could tilt Bruce’s chin up and try to get a good look at his expression.  “You ok?”

Maybe he was getting a little sleepy in spite of himself, or maybe it was something about the warmth and the dim lighting, but Bruce’s thoughts were out his mouth before he’d realized they’d flown. 

“How did I get here?”

Tony smiled, moved his hand to rub at the perfect place where Bruce’s head stopped and his neck began.  “I brought you here.”

Bruce laughed short and stiff, but even without that Tony must have realized it was a literal answer to a complex question and added, softer, “You kissed me in a SHIELD lab.”

It wasn’t that Bruce had forgotten – how could he ever forget?  Yet there was still a brief moment where shock streaked across his memory.  _I **did**?  _

How had he ever been brave enough?  Standing here now at the foot of the bed – _Tony fucking Stark’s_ bed – he didn’t feel brave at all.  He squeezed Tony’s fingers, trying to ground himself in how real they felt, in the wrinkles of knuckles and the rough patch of a burn scar. 

“Hey,” Tony said, using his hold to gently clunk their foreheads together.  “Hey.  Bruce.  It’s just me,” and that was what kindness sounded like, Tony’s voice a hint plaintive saying, “It’s still just me.”

Bruce tilted his face so their mouths brushed in a way that wasn’t quite kissing but felt just as good, maybe better, because Tony’s gusts of breath were soothing, and those nuzzles were a promise – even the heat between them, the slight tremble of skin, was a promise – it was enough because they knew they could have everything, any moment, whenever they wanted.

No point rushing.

Tony was the one who finally brought them together, running the tip of his tongue along Bruce’s bottom lip until he parted his mouth and let Tony in.  He remembered then what he’d felt back up in the air, and the memory got stronger with every second of Tony’s fingers in his hair, pressing hard against the back of his head, of Tony’s tongue cool and soft against his.

It hadn’t been about courage, but about wanting something too much to do anything else.

Tony braced his hands against Bruce’s shoulders and broke their kiss, eyes flashing, obviously tempted but hesitant to actually push, so Bruce drew him in with hands on his lower back, pulled their bodies close and let his knees give way, letting himself fall back so that they tumbled to the mattress together.

They fell into their usual pattern (and they _had a pattern_ , Bruce realized in a rush of warm gratitude, because they’d been doing some variation of this dance every night for almost a week straight) of companionable competition, a kind of wrestling match to see who could lay more affection on the other, a game it was impossible to lose.  For the first few minutes the bed felt almost as good as Tony’s body, with the balance of give and firmness and the feeling of silky covers against fully naked skin.  There was so much room – they could roll together effortlessly, change positions in seconds, and having all that space made bringing each other close so much better because it wasn’t out of necessity but out of wanting to eliminate every inch of open air between their bodies.  Tony was smooth and pleasantly damp from their shower under Bruce's hands, alternating between pushing against him and pulling him in, much _louder_ than Bruce remembered, and the volume of his enthusiasm made Bruce realize that for the first time they were really alone, somewhere big and soft and perfect with no one to walk in on them or even hear them.

Something moved inside of Bruce’s heart and his head, washing over his brain like warm liquid, twisting inside his chest, faintly familiar and rusty with lack of use.  He tried to put a name to it with the parts of his mind that weren’t already busy with warm pleasure signals; it was something bigger than contentment, more profound than safety, and in the end as Tony caught ahold of his hips and pressed wet and silky against him he decided to stop scrutinizing and let himself feel it.

Finally he had to plead, “Not – Tony, not _yet_ ” – he was caught with Tony’s thigh on his hip, leg wrapped around the back of his knee, one arm trapped beneath them and one hand on Bruce’s ass, pulling him over and over into that delicious, feverish friction.

Tony halted immediately, letting some air flow back into the gap between them.  “You ok?”

“ _God_ yes, I – I just don’t want it to be over yet.”

The concern fled Tony’s face and left something like pride in its wake, his lip caught between his teeth and his eyes sparkling.

Bruce pressed out an exhale of self-deprecating laughter.  “This is…”  He cast his eyes around for some kind of defense.

“Hey.  I know.”  Tony nuzzled noses with him.  “I know.  If you hadn’t got me in the car I’d be right there with you.”  He used the position of his leg as leverage to roll over on top of Bruce, propped up at the forearms.  “Relax, buddy,” he said between lazy kisses.  “We’ve got nothing but time.”

A few more minutes passed before he moved his lips from Bruce’s mouth to his ear, sucking gently on the lobe before whispering carefully, so quiet that he felt it more than heard – _How do you want me?_ – and he was so overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the question and his position in the universe relative to it and to Tony’s body that he accidentally told the truth.

“Fuck me.”

“Anything.”  Tony’s lips moved against his neck as he spoke.  “Anything you want.”

Bruce swallowed hard enough that he could hear it.  “That is what I want.”

Tony lifted himself up like a shot, all haziness gone, his eyes locked onto Bruce’s.  “Oh.  _Oh._   So you are in fact speaking literally, is that a correct interpretation, that you were making a literal request instead of a generalization?”

Bruce gave an awkward nod.  “But.  Only.  Y’know.  Only if you want to.”

“Only if I want to.”  Tony shifted his glance to the side, hissing amused disbelief.  “Only if I _want_ to.”  He turned his head back to lock eyes once more.  “Do _you_ want to?  For sure?  I don’t want you to feel like, you know…there’s no pressure from me, ok?  On anything, ever.”

Bruce nodded with only a little more confidence.  “We’ll have to be careful.  And – and slow.  I mean, I can’t-”  He tried to turn his next shaky breath into a laugh.  “It won’t be – what you’re used to.  Probably.  So if you didn’t-”

Tony pressed his mouth to Bruce’s, not forceful, but effectively silencing him.  “You’re here now,” he said after he’d pulled away, “you came all this way, and now you’re here, and I – I really, _really_ like it when you ask me for things.  You know that?  It just, I dunno, it looks good on you, so – while you’re here, while I’m with you, anything you want, all you have to do is ask.”

“…that’s a lot of power.”

Tony gave him a crooked smile.  “Yeah, well, it’s you, it’s not like you’re gonna abuse it.”

Looking at the light beaming out of Tony’s chest, tracing his finger around the rim, was easier than meeting his eyes now that there was so much focus on him telling the absolute and mildly terrifying truth.  “I – I want you to fuck me.  Tony.  Please.”

“Yes.  God yes.”  Tony broke, plunked his forehead against Bruce’s sternum and made a long noise of happy misery.  “Holy hell _yes_ we can make that happen.  Let me-”  He paused for only a few thoughtful seconds and pushed himself up, rocketing across the room to the door of what Bruce assumed was another ridiculously large closet, similar to or maybe even bigger than the one at the Tower.  “Let me get some extra bedding,” he called back.  “There’s condoms and lube in the drawer – pick whatever you want.”

Bruce took the opportunity to breathe deeply, easing himself up and sliding, still sitting, to the nearest bedside table.  He tried very hard not to think.

Opening the drawer was helpful with that.  Every potential thought process was shot clean out of his head.  He stared in silence for a moment, slowly slid the drawer shut again, and let out an explosive bark of laughter.

Tony’s head popped out of the closet.  “Oh.  Uh, _bottom_ drawer, should have specified.”

“Tony,” Bruce said as he slid the bottom drawer open, “how many strap-ons did I just inadvertently stumble across?”

“Uh…”  Tony’s voice was somewhat muffled by his return to perusing the closet, but mostly unabashed.  “There are…seven?”

“And do they all have the similar color scheme to the suits?  Or was that only the ones my eye naturally fell on because they were the, uh, flashiest?”

Tony emerged with his arms full of linen.  “Is that… _judgment_ I hear in your voice?  Really?  Are you judging me right now, Banner?”  Bruce pursed his lips together hard to keep his laughter on the inside as Tony made his way across the room to where Bruce’s duffel had been left on the floor.  “You’re going to sit over there and judge me after I had to very firmly talk you down from a suit kink not even a full week ago?” he continued, rooting around inside the bag.  “Because I gotta say, for almost anybody else that would be a great way to guarantee a total lack of getting fucked.”  He came back to the bed and dropped Bruce’s replacement reading glasses down on the left side table.

“Aw.”  Bruce shifted the glasses so they were lenses-up.  “That was considerate of you.”

“Yeah,” Tony snorted, dropping the pile of linen on the bed and plonking down in a sit next to Bruce.   “Here.  Extra sheets.  So nobody has to sleep in the wet spot.  Because I am a considerate non-judgmental guy.”

Bruce gave his shoulder a somewhat shy kiss.  “Not judging, just – out of my league.  You’re going to need to help me out here – this isn’t a drawer, it’s a very compact adult party store.”

Tony broke out a smile at that, threw a friendly arm over Bruce’s shoulder and dug through the mess of bottles and boxes with his free hand.  “No such thing as being too prepared.  Maybe this is a dumb question, but any latex allergies?  …ok, ok,” he responded to Bruce’s incredulous look.  “Worth checking, a couple allergies might have survived along with your farsightedness and salt-and-pepper.”  He pulled a brightly-labeled bottle out of the drawer and set it upright on the table, followed by a latex glove and a small plastic packet.

Bruce’s mouth was half-formed around the words – _oh, you really don’t have to_ – he’d done enough tests on himself to know that he was immune to everything under the sun (or at least this sun), that there wasn’t an infection known to man that could survive him.  But there was something about the sight of that shiny packet that stopped him, something that took the shape of a lump in his throat. 

Tony must have been used to wearing condoms, considering how many partners he’d had.  It made sense that reaching for one would be his first instinct, no questions asked, no need for a conversation.  He’d even said something about them back in the helicarrier closet, if memory served him.  But…all the same.  It was a gesture of respect that hadn’t always been granted so easily, and he appreciated Tony’s immediate willingness to protect both of them.

Besides, while the majority of his fluids emitted low enough levels of radiation not to be harmful, his blood was the one exception.  He trusted Tony to be careful, so even a microtear was unlikely, but it was better not to take the risk of _any_ part of Tony making contact with his bloodstream.

“C’mon,” Tony directed under his breath, getting to his feet and unfolding the blue-grey sheet, jolting Bruce out of his thoughts.  “Scoot that magnificent fuzzy ass of yours.”  Bruce eased himself up as well, stood at the foot of the bed and watched Tony unfurl the sheet, fold it over once in the middle, and drape it evenly at waist-height over the bedspread.

Once he had the setup he wanted, Tony reached for Bruce’s hand and guided him back down to bed, tugging a few extra pillows over for him to rest his head and upper back against before smoothing his hands over Bruce’s chest, encouraging him to lie back and relax.  Bruce did his best to oblige, taking deep breaths and zoning in on the softness of high-count sheets and skin.

Tony’s hands traveled lower, brushing from ribs to hips, down the full length of each arm and then each leg, taking their appreciative time.  When he ran out of places on Bruce’s front to explore he rolled them over onto their sides so he could hold Bruce close as he pulled him into a kiss, tracing his back with the light pressure of fingernails from neck to tailbone.  Bruce shuddered and gave a low hum into Tony’s mouth, and Tony’s fingers tightened in a quick grope against Bruce’s ass before slipping to his outer thigh and directing the leg up to wrap around his waist.  He let the kiss go gentle as he slid his hand back along the contour of Bruce’s cheek and brushed the pad of a single finger in the lightest imaginable touch against his opening.

Bruce’s body gave a harder reflexive shudder.  “You like that?” Tony murmured, his tone perfectly balanced between dirty talk and genuine inquisitiveness, keeping up the gentle pressure with just the tip of his finger, massaging in small circles.  “Does that feel good?”

“Yeah,” Bruce encouraged, letting out a long, warm exhale.  It felt beyond good, Tony brushing against dozens upon dozens of long-neglected nerve endings – it had been what seemed like a small eternity since anyone had last touched him like this, and none of them had been this gentle or precise.

“You done this before?” Tony asked, as if he’d read his mind.

Bruce gave a jerky nod.  “Off and on.  In my student years, which were…many.  Not for a long time though.”

Tony pressed a little harder, making Bruce groan before he realized he’d done it, his hips instinctively pushing against Tony's hand.  It was like being given back an extra sense he’d forgotten he had, and he could feel the muscles there contracting, squeezing the tip of Tony’s finger, pulling him closer.

Bruce could tell by Tony's smile that he could feel it, too.  He rubbed a few moments more, sucking Bruce’s lip, before backing away so he could equip from the bedside table, breathing out the word _god_ as he did so.

He moved quickly, but still took the time to give the wrist of the glove a theatric _snap_ to Bruce’s appreciative grin.  Bruce rearranged the multitude of pillows behind him so that he could prop his head and upper back instead of lying flat, then watched as Tony squeezed a line of lube over his gloved index finger before using his other fingers to spread it evenly.

“It’s gonna be cold,” he warned as Bruce hooked a finger under the wrist of the glove and tugged lightly but impatiently.

“Don’t care,” Bruce answered quickly, spreading his legs wider.  Tony chuckled and took the invitation, settling in a kneel between Bruce’s legs and reaching in to touch him again, this time with his finger wet and incased in latex.  Bruce full-body jolted at the first contact – it was icy against his burning skin but it still felt _good_ , and it was only a matter of seconds before the lube warmed to a temperature closer to his own body’s and he could focus again on the pressure of Tony’s finger as he went a little harder and deeper than before.

“Please,” he found himself murmuring.  “Tony, _please._ ”

Tony complied and Bruce’s back arched a little, his head pushed against the pillows as Tony slid inch by gentle inch until he was in Bruce to the third knuckle.  It would take some getting used to – his brain was sending out conflicting signals of pleasure and confusion – but the simple intimacy of it, the way it felt having part of Tony moving inside of him, was enough to take his breath away.

Tony carefully drew back until just the tip of his finger was inside, then slowly pushed in again.  With each repetition of the motion he sped up, and it got easier for Bruce to focus on the sensitivity instead of the invasiveness, to assure his brain that this was good, no need for concern.  With each reassurance he found it easier to relax his muscles, to clench them only when he wanted to.

“You want more?” Tony asked and Bruce gave a rapid-fire nod, watching with mild fascination as Tony drew another line of lubricant on his middle finger and spread it with a combination of ring and thumb.  His body wasn’t quite ready for the additional stretch and Tony, of course, knew it, massaging carefully with shallow thrusts until the second ring of muscle began to relax and accommodate him.  Once both fingers were inside as far as they could go Bruce had only a few seconds to marvel at his own resilience before Tony crooked and pressed forward.

Bruce jerked and made a patently unflattering noise, to which Tony responded with a snort of laughter.

“Shut up,” Bruce barely had time to gasp before Tony pressed again, and he tried with marginal success to shape the sounds coming out of his mouth into something more dignified.  A few seconds later he’d stopped caring, and a few more seconds after that he’d forgotten about the concept of dignity altogether.

“ _Why_ ,” he panted after a few hearty repetitions of Tony’s name and unheard pleas to higher powers, “did I wait so many years to _do_ this?”

“Sorry that you did,” Tony remarked, his own breath coming short just from proximity.  “Really happy that I got to be here for it.”

Bruce must have managed to articulate _more_ because he had a vague memory of a few terrible seconds of emptiness before Tony went three fingers into him at that same perfect angle and time cracked apart again.  The only thing that kept him from total satisfaction was the thought that he wanted Tony to feel what he was feeling, or something close to it at the very least - that was why he’d wanted this so badly in the first place, for the mutuality of it, everything all at once instead of having to take turns, and as those motivations came rising back to him he shot a hand out haphazardly towards the table, fumbling for a few seconds until he felt crinkly plastic.

He held the small packet out towards Tony with trembling fingers.  Tony locked eyes with him, pupils blown wide and black, and gave him a breathless smile as he took the offering with his free hand, sliding the other out of Bruce.  He peeled off the glove so it was inside-out and set it carefully on the floor beside the bed.

Bruce watched him roll the condom on with pounding heart, overwhelmed by the same warm, protected feeling he’d had when Tony put the packet on the table, and by the knowledge of what was about to happen.  His muscles twitched involuntarily, clenching around emptiness as Tony spread additional lube over himself and cleaned his hand on the extra bedsheet.  Bruce slid his hands to the pillows behind him, pushing one out of the way and tugging the others down flat, not wanting to look away from Tony for so much as an instant.  He lay back, head against the rearranged pillows, and slid his legs up around Tony’s waist, using his feet to guide Tony’s torso, to pull his whole body in closer.

He thought maybe he should’ve said something, but he’d run out of words.  Instead he steered Tony with one hand at the base of his cock, helped him over a few seconds of slippery, awkward fumbling and quiet laughter, and then the stretch and burn and the _intensity_ , so many nerves firing at once – his head thumped lightly against the pillows when he threw it back unconsciously, his eyes shut on reflex.

He heard Tony’s breath hitch, spill out in a shudder, and hitch again, felt him pull carefully back and press in once, twice – and then his own name – “ _Bruce_ ” – fell out of him with something that nearly sounded like panic.

Bruce cracked his eyes open, took in Tony’s face open and slack with shock at the depth of his own pleasure.  “You’re warm,” Tony explained weakly.  “Really – _really_ warm and tight and I knew it’d be like that but I didn’t oh fuck _Bruce-_ ”

He wrapped his legs tighter around Tony’s waist and pushed against him until even Tony’s wrecked defensiveness fell apart into soft, happy, broken noises, and he couldn’t help but feel a little proud thinking that for all of that previous life experience Tony Stark himself could still look like that, sound like that, because of him.

They eased into a rhythm together, and it didn’t have the intensity or precision of Tony’s fingers but it was slow and deep and _good_.  Bruce felt like contentment personified, like he really could’ve done this, stayed like this, until the sun came up.  He ran his hands up and down Tony’s biceps where his arms were propping him up at the elbow, trying to bring Tony into that same state of relaxation, because while the other man was clearly enjoying himself he was also making the same focus face Bruce had seen on him in the lab whenever he was caught up in problem-solving.

“Tony.”  He raised a hand and gave Tony’s cheek a playful flick with one finger.  “You still in there?”

“Obviously,” Tony retorted without missing a beat, deadpan expression breaking into a hundred-watt smile at Bruce’s resulting burst of laughter.  “Hey,” he offered, “just want to make this so good for you.”

“Oh, you’re good, it’s _good_.”

“Yeah, but it could be-”  He slowed his thrusts almost to a stop, scooted forward about an inch on his knees, and brought his hands against Bruce’s shoulders, encouraging him to roll back a little.  “You’re pretty flexible, right?  You got those yoga-tai-chi legs?”

“Not sure about your terminology, but yeah, I have a fair range of motion for a guy my age, I don’t mind saying it.”

“I don’t mind knowing it.  Think you could get your legs up over my shoulders?”

He could, easily, with only a little bit of a burn in his hamstrings.  He could feel the stretch more when Tony leaned forward, enough that he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold _this_ until sunrise, but before he could gauge just how long he could sustain it Tony rolled him back a little further and pushed forward with his hips and –

“Oh – _oh-”_

“There?”

“Tony-”

Tony gave him another slow roll of his hips and Bruce could _feel_ it, feel the head of his cock pressing against that perfect trigger - 

“Oh god _Tony-_ ”

“See, that,” Tony panted, “that right there, that’s exactly what I was going for.  You good?  Good angle?  Legs ok?”

“Yes, yes, fuck Tony _please_ just-”

“Yeah, ok-”

Tony moved and Bruce shattered.

There had been a part of him that had expected it to be hard and showy and quick, for some reason.  Even though he couldn’t really do that.  Even though that wasn’t what Tony was like.  He’d forgotten that Tony would always do his utmost to break him open, to get at the soft pieces inside of him, without even trying – without even realizing, sometimes.

Tony moved in him, barely withdrawing, kneading him gentle and steady and perfect perfect _perfect_ and it was without question the best thing he had ever known.

He couldn’t feel the ache in his legs anymore but he could feel the pleasure everywhere, fizzing in the tips of his fingers, moving in waves over his belly, electric currents shooting through his head.  He hadn’t known it was possible to get this hard, and in any other circumstances it would’ve been cause for concern – as it was the main concern he had was that even a slight brush of Tony’s skin against his cock might make him explode.

He’d never realized it was possible to sweat this much, either; he could feel it coming over him and soaking into the comforter, feel individual drops form and pool together and slide over his skin.  He could tell Tony was also breaking out in sweat by the slide of his legs against Tony’s shoulders, and by the smell – a profound, aching, wonderful smell.  Whenever he took a deep inhale it made every muscle in his groin twitch.

He’d lost any and all control over his voice, had no regulation over the sounds he was making anymore, only knew he was making noise at all by the tightness in his throat, the burn of each new breath.  He could hear Tony as if from far away, across the room or through a thin layer of wall, vocalizing softly on each exhale.  He was dimly amazed through the rush of his own blood that Tony could keep his breath rate so steady, and he pried his eyes open (difficult, difficult, like lifting a heavy weight, pushing up against a sticky door) to look at him, to watch, to try and understand how he could do it –

Tony’s pupils had chased every trace of brown out of his eyes, even with the light streaming out of his chest, gleaming trapped between their bodies.  He still looked as though he were panicked by his own pleasure, caught in a perpetual state of surprise at every new second of sensation, and every third or fourth breath came in a violent shudder.  Bruce watched a drop of sweat trickle down Tony’s temple and realized through the thick haze of stimulation that Tony was edging himself, that he was using every last ounce of self-control he possessed not to come, to maintain that slow, careful pace.

Bruce forced himself to hold Tony’s eyes with his own, not to look away, even as the brutality of the intimacy began to overwhelm him.  He felt his own panic beginning to rise at how much – how _much_ – everything that Tony was laying on him –

_I shouldn’t have done this I shouldn’t have_

_This is the best decision I’ve ever made_

_This was a mistake this was a mistake why did I_

It was so much so much _too_ much – it was agonizing and it had to stop he _needed_ it to stop and it felt so _good_ and he never wanted it to end –

“…Bruce?  Hey Bruce?”

Tony was moving away, cold air rushing into the spaces around Bruce’s head as Tony took ahold of his calves, taking some of the pressure off of his muscles that he hadn’t realized was there, shining light into his face, and Bruce heard a sound, choked and sad, coming out of his own mouth at even the slightest absence of Tony’s body –

“Hey, Bruce, buddy, you’re…you’re going a little green around the edges-”

Bruce blinked and breathed and realized he could see it, the veins going dark in his shins, in his outstretched hand, the color spreading like a drop of dye billowing out in a pool of liquid…

“Oh…shit.  Oh shit Tony oh _shit-_ ”

“Sssh.  Bruce.  It’s ok.”

“Don’t – Tony, don’t-”

“No, it’s ok, it’s ok-”

_Why are you still in me why are you still here why aren’t you running_

“Don’t-”

“It’s ok, we’re ok-”

“ _Don’t stop._ ”

The horror stung him, ripped into his chest, self-disgust threatening to drown him, and yet the words still spilled out of him, almost a sob-

“Don’t stop, Tony, _please,_ don’t-”

“Ok, ok, I don’t want to, Bruce, I just need you to breathe, ok?  Just breathe.  Deep breaths.”

Tony’s hand cupping his face, thumb smoothing over his cheek, Tony’s voice soothing in his ears, _Sssh, sssh, deep breaths, deep…breaths…that’s right, just like that._

Bruce inhaled deep, lungs full, diaphragm expanding even at the strange angle, and imagined the oxygen chasing back the color, pushing it back down – it made no sense, it wasn’t even how it worked, but it helped to think of it that way.

 _Just like that.  Good.  Good._  

There were things that were important, so many things, what he thought of himself and how he lived and what he did to keep the inside in but nothing was more important than keeping Tony right there, there was nothing he had ever wanted more.

_Just…like…that.  Breathe._

Bruce closed his eyes and exhaled, drawing it out long and slow, no rush of air.  He thought of Tony while he did it.  He took the care and the tenderness, the precision, the – the way that –

The way that Tony –

 _Breathe_.

All the things Tony laid on him.

“Hey…Bruce?  You ok?  Better?  Green’s all gone.”

He opened his eyes and looked back up at Tony.

“…yeah.  Yeah, I’m ok now.  I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

“No worries,” Tony said lightly, as if it were actually true.

Bruce moved his hands to Tony’s upper arms, squeezed, and gently tugged, and Tony let his shoulders take the weight of Bruce’s legs before sinking back down to his elbows, careful, so careful the whole time not to let himself slide out of Bruce.

“Hey, can I – uh, let’s see-”  There were a few moments of clumsy wiggling, and Bruce was shaken briefly out of his melancholy by the absurdity of it, thinking about how ridiculous they must look, before Tony eased them together into the angles of legs and spines that would allow their lips to touch.

Bruce pushed up into it, lifting his shoulders off the mattress, twining the fingers of one hand in Tony’s hair and squeezing his arm with the other.  There was tension in the muscles there, and Bruce was reminded again of how strong Tony was – this couldn’t be easy on his arms (or his spine or his abs) but he seemed determined to hold it as long as he possibly could.

Tony, beautifully patient Tony, kissed him slow and sweet until Bruce’s pulse settled down to a warm purr deep in his chest, and only then did he start moving his hips again.  He was still finding Bruce’s prostate without fail on the deepest part of every stroke, but he moved even slower than before.  Bruce could almost see the waveform of the pleasure dancing behind his eyelids.  He fed Tony a line of sounds, dug his fingers deeper into his hair, and tried to keep his breathing deep and measured.

He wouldn’t think – he _couldn’t_ – about whether or not he deserved this, or what it meant that he could start changing shades and Tony would barely flinch even buried inside of him.  He wouldn’t weigh the implications, wouldn’t follow them to their natural conclusions – he wouldn’t be an idiot and freak out because then Tony really would leave, pull away from him, and his small, personal world would end; he would break.

If he was going to break today, he didn’t want it to be like that.

His body was open, welcoming and happy to receive (and it hadn’t hurt, not once, not even a little).  It seemed like it should be simple to get his mind to do the same.  It really should be simple.

All the things Tony laid on him.

Tony’s generosity, and his humor.  Gentle insistence.  _I want you to be happy_.

His consideration.  His affection.  Time and attention.  Concern and determination.

Tony’s –

His – 

_I don’t deserve it but I want it and nobody has to know but me._

He couldn’t name it, not here, not yet, but he could feel it, and he could let it happen.  He wouldn’t drown if he could only manage to float.

He focused on the waveform, ebb and flow, ebb and flow –

and he opened up –

and he let it all in.

He was doused with physical and emotional heat, cozy tendrils of warmth that crept over his heart and held him steady and safe.  The pleasure lapping at his core was tugging him further and further away from the neverending noise of his thoughts, pulling him under, ever closer to peaceful oblivion, and this time he didn’t struggle, just let the tide carry him out.

He could hear above him the sweet sounds of Tony’s composure cracking beyond repair.

He forced his eyes open, long enough to see that Tony’s were lightly shut, his mouth open in wonder, the tension smoothed out of his face, and for a moment Tony looked so much like Bruce felt that he lost track of who was who.

And he broke.

His eyes jolted shut because the stimulus of sight was too much too much too _much_ there was no room left for all that color and light alongside the neural explosion of _good_ that plucked a chord on every nerve he possessed.  Someone was shouting, far away, and when the voice broke down into something almost like laughter to the same rhythm of his muscles shuddering and wringing him out he realized _oh, that’s me_.

He kept expecting it to end but it _didn’t_ , microseconds dragging out and skewing all sense of his place in time, so it was still going on when he heard Tony yell his name –

“Ah god _Bruce-!”_

\- and it was the most massive effort of willpower short of all the times he’d managed not to Hulk out to pry his eyes open, to shove his consciousness back into the physical plane, because he had to see it, had to _feel_ it –

Tony didn’t cry out; instead all the air left him in one loud long _whoosh_ as the muscles in his legs and torso locked and he white-knuckled almost straight into the mattress, his hips stuttering one last agonizingly sensitive time as he pulsed and came deep inside of Bruce.

Bruce had just enough presence of mind to put his hands on Tony’s back and gently rub him through his riptide, even as his own released him and washed him back up on shore.

“Holy shit,” Tony panted once his ability to speak had come back to him.  “Holy _shit_ , that was, hands-down, one of the most gorgeous things I have ever _seen_ , I mean, I didn’t even lay a _finger_ on you-”

Bruce tried to say something in response as Tony carefully pulled out of him and flopped himself out at his side, but all he could manage was quiet, breathless laughter.

“It’s ok,” Tony assured him, just as breathless.  “You can say I was the best you ever had.  I promise I won’t get self-conscious.”

At that, Bruce was able to let out an actual voiced laugh.  “Well.”  He tried to roll over to face Tony, but the plan only made it as far as the conceptual phase.  He felt immobilized, liquid, so fucking _wonderful_ that it didn’t seem like it should be allowed.  “You were.”

Tony flung an arm clumsily across his chest.  “As soon as you get feeling back in your legs, I highly recommend another shower.  Waking up with an assful of day-old lube is a really missable experience.”

“See, that’s gonna be a problem.  Because I’m pretty sure I’m never gonna be able to move again.  Ever.”

“Mmmm.  Sorry, not sorry.”

Whatever had gone down in an airport men’s room earlier in the day had nothing on Bruce’s second shower.  His legs had turned entirely to jelly and showed no signs of transforming back any time soon.  He absolutely, without a doubt, could not have done it alone, and was halfway convinced he might even have drowned if left to his own devices.  Tony kept him up with an arm around his waist, whining the whole time in contrast to the smile he couldn’t keep off his face.

Bruce was grateful for Tony’s foresight in laying out an extra sheet once Tony had led him carefully back to bed and he’d blearily taken in the sheer circumference of the wet spot he’d left.  Not to mention the amount of mess they’d both had to clean off of their torsos during their shower.  He couldn’t help but be a little in awe of himself.

Tony removed the sheet and crumpled it up at the bedside, turning down the covers and giving Bruce a hand back down.  As soon as his body hit the mattress, the irrefusible pull of sleep crept up on him behind his eyes, as impossible to ignore as the undertow of orgasm.

“There he goes again,” Tony said with such obvious warm fondness that Bruce’s heart skipped a beat, and he pushed damp hair across Bruce’s forehead before settling in behind him with an arm around his torso.  “Sweet dreams, Doctor Banner.”

“You too, Mr. Stark.”  Bruce squeezed Tony’s fingers and fell back into the soft, comfortable dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This. This damn thing. This was my Balin's Tomb, except instead of a group of heroes stuck standing around a dead dwarf rock it was these two assholes *refusing to get out of the goddamn shower* for almost *TWO FUCKING YEARS*.
> 
> Don't take two-year showers, folks. Imagine how pruney you'd get.


End file.
